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Can you share what Chromebook you have, and do you use it for light programming or something else? The other day I read that there's an Android Studio for Chro

Can you share what Chromebook you have, and do you use it for light programming or something else? The other day I read that there's an Android Studio for Chromebook, which kind of surprised me, in a pleasant way.

pjmlp 3y ago
Given the experience of using Android Studio on regular computers, and the hardware of most Chromebooks, that is most likely targeted for people that like to suffer.
mdhb 3y ago
I’ve been doing full stack web and mobile development on a Chromebook for about 18 months now. It’s actually the best developer experience I’ve ever had. Everything is nicely sandboxed, things work well by default. I probably spend about 50/50 of my development time either locally in the integrated Linux developer environment or remotely using GitHub Codespaces where I’m just using a PWA essentially as my IDE.
- balder1991 3y ago
  What’s the specs of your Chromebook? I’m thinking about buying one and sell the crappy tablet I almost never use. But I have the impression from reading the subreddit that 4GB isn’t enough to use Android apps on it. Also I’m not sure how to know if Linux container is available from random Chromebooks in local stores.
cj 3y ago
I’m using 4-5 year old Pixelbooks. I think they’re discontinued now probably because the high price point ($999). But they last an extremely long time, durable, fast, simple. I don’t use it for development, more so for day to day web browsing and when traveling since it’s smaller and thinner than average laptop. I really don’t know what chromeOS hardware I would go with once the pixelbook dies. Edit: anyone try the Pixelbook Go? Same price point as the original pixelbook and upgradable to 16gb ram.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  I owned a Pixelbook Go and it was good but it died after getting only slightly damp, wrecked the keyboard somehow. I can't imagine getting one today since at the same price point you can get the much much faster HP Dragonfly Pro. The only real drawback is the 14" HP is bigger and heavier than the 12" Pixelbooks.
- omjha 3y ago
  Picked one up this week! It may seem like there aren't any resources online for it (I'm working on a guide) but it actually works great! Just use a recent kernel and https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio for audio which works pretty great. Hardware is amazing, arch flies on this thing and the battery life lasts forever.
  - cj 3y ago
    Re: battery life, completely agree. it’s one of the few devices I don’t have to worry about charging every day, battery lasts forever
TheCycoONE 3y ago
I have a Samsung Chromebook Plus (v1/kevin). I was looking for something that wouldn't be too cumbersome to carry around with my work laptop during my 1hr commute and at roughly 1cm thick and 2lbs this machine fit the bill. I swapped the OS to ArchLinux ARM and used it as a light dev environment sticking to nvim+lsp. These days I work from home and rarely use it - just for writing.
rkeene2 3y ago
I've been using Linux and UNIX (Solaris, HP-UX) on my workstation since 1999. I did a 2 year experiment on using a (non-rooted) Chromebook as my only machine and it works fine for everything except the terrible window management, very basic UI, and occasionally having access to the system to debug peripherals. I'm back on Linux using XFCE, and it's much better being able to set hotkeys to what I want.
jeffbee 3y ago
HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook. I don't use it for "light" programming, I just use it for anything. I picked this hardware because the display backlight is extremely bright and it can be used outdoors under any conditions.
ufmace 3y ago
I'm typing this on a Asus Spin 713. IMO, works great both for web browsing and other consumer-level tasks and for development and system administration. The Linux container image gives me a full command line, and pretty much everything works, including my usual Tmux+Neovim development environment. I've never felt the need to do any development on a remote VM or anything.

pjmlp 3y ago

Given the experience of using Android Studio on regular computers, and the hardware of most Chromebooks, that is most likely targeted for people that like to suffer.

mdhb 3y ago

I’ve been doing full stack web and mobile development on a Chromebook for about 18 months now. It’s actually the best developer experience I’ve ever had. Everything is nicely sandboxed, things work well by default. I probably spend about 50/50 of my development time either locally in the integrated Linux developer environment or remotely using GitHub Codespaces where I’m just using a PWA essentially as my IDE.

balder1991 3y ago
What’s the specs of your Chromebook? I’m thinking about buying one and sell the crappy tablet I almost never use. But I have the impression from reading the subreddit that 4GB isn’t enough to use Android apps on it. Also I’m not sure how to know if Linux container is available from random Chromebooks in local stores.

cj 3y ago

I’m using 4-5 year old Pixelbooks. I think they’re discontinued now probably because the high price point ($999). But they last an extremely long time, durable, fast, simple. I don’t use it for development, more so for day to day web browsing and when traveling since it’s smaller and thinner than average laptop. I really don’t know what chromeOS hardware I would go with once the pixelbook dies. Edit: anyone try the Pixelbook Go? Same price point as the original pixelbook and upgradable to 16gb ram.

jeffbee 3y ago
I owned a Pixelbook Go and it was good but it died after getting only slightly damp, wrecked the keyboard somehow. I can't imagine getting one today since at the same price point you can get the much much faster HP Dragonfly Pro. The only real drawback is the 14" HP is bigger and heavier than the 12" Pixelbooks.
omjha 3y ago
Picked one up this week! It may seem like there aren't any resources online for it (I'm working on a guide) but it actually works great! Just use a recent kernel and https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio for audio which works pretty great. Hardware is amazing, arch flies on this thing and the battery life lasts forever.
- cj 3y ago
  Re: battery life, completely agree. it’s one of the few devices I don’t have to worry about charging every day, battery lasts forever

TheCycoONE 3y ago

I have a Samsung Chromebook Plus (v1/kevin). I was looking for something that wouldn't be too cumbersome to carry around with my work laptop during my 1hr commute and at roughly 1cm thick and 2lbs this machine fit the bill. I swapped the OS to ArchLinux ARM and used it as a light dev environment sticking to nvim+lsp. These days I work from home and rarely use it - just for writing.

rkeene2 3y ago

I've been using Linux and UNIX (Solaris, HP-UX) on my workstation since 1999. I did a 2 year experiment on using a (non-rooted) Chromebook as my only machine and it works fine for everything except the terrible window management, very basic UI, and occasionally having access to the system to debug peripherals. I'm back on Linux using XFCE, and it's much better being able to set hotkeys to what I want.

jeffbee 3y ago

HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook. I don't use it for "light" programming, I just use it for anything. I picked this hardware because the display backlight is extremely bright and it can be used outdoors under any conditions.

ufmace 3y ago

I'm typing this on a Asus Spin 713. IMO, works great both for web browsing and other consumer-level tasks and for development and system administration. The Linux container image gives me a full command line, and pretty much everything works, including my usual Tmux+Neovim development environment. I've never felt the need to do any development on a remote VM or anything.