5 ms·

> A Chromebook’s ceiling is made of web browser, and the things you run into are not the edges of computing but the edges of a product category designed to save

> A Chromebook’s ceiling is made of web browser, and the things you run into are not the edges of computing but the edges of a product category designed to save you from yourself. I'm in the same boat as the author; I cut my teeth on a hand-me-down 2005 eMac, then a hand-me-down 2008 Macbook, before finally getting my own 2011 iMac. I think this is overly harsh on Chromebooks given they belong to the cheaper end of the market - you can still put linux on them and go for gold, you're just going to hit earlier resource limits. I think when you're younger and building an aptitude for computers, it's the limitations of what you have that drive an off-the-shelf challenge: doing what you can with what you've got. That can vary from just trying to play the same video games as your friends (love what /r/lowendgaming does), usage restrictions (e.g locked down school issued laptops) or running professional tooling (very slowly) just like the author. When IT caught my interest, I did all of the above - on Mac, Windows and Linux, on completely garbage machines. The Macbook Neo is an awesome machine for it's cost/value, but I don't think it's hugely special in the respect described beyond making more power available at a more accessible price point.

saagarjha 7mo ago
When Chromebooks originally came out, that was not an option. And almost all school-issued computers will not let you do this.
- tosti 7mo ago
  It was possible on the Acer model I got when it first came out, but it was still useless. A switch that wiped the whole thing back to defaults was needed to open a terminal and from there a shell script could install Ubuntu. It still ran the unmodifiable chromeos kernel with no updates and without some of the modules I'd like. And then the screen died. It was junk. The EeePC was cheaper, lasted much longer and had Debian out of the box.
- zeta0134 7mo ago
  I've owned and used the CR-48 prototype Chromebook model, which very well did have a developer mode and a third kernel option built right in. Ran Ubuntu on it with no issues. This has been possible since before the device family was officially available for purchase. The school thing is different, but also hardly unique. A school issued macbook is often similarly locked down and unusable as a dev machine, due to the student lacking permissions to install anything the school deems dangerous.
- creshal 7mo ago
  That includes school-issued Macs, so I don't see how that's an argument against Chromebooks.
- ghoulishly 7mo ago
  Author of the post here. You nailed it here; I used Chromebook as the example in my post since the one I used in high school was locked down to basically a kiosk. Couldn’t even open dev tools, much less root it. Such a wild departure from the eMacs I used in my elementary school’s library where I could set bonkers `defaults write` commands and customize every aspect of my account. If I got a Chromebook as a personal machine as a kid, I probably would’ve rooted it and see what I could do, but growing up, the beauty of the Mac (in that Snow Leopard era) was progressive disclosure. I could start on the happy path and have a perfectly stable machine, then customize the behaviors through the terminal, see what it does, mess with the system files, see what breaks, revert it, then go back to using iMovie like normal. In my (admittedly limited) time using a rooted Chromebook, it’s much more like a switch flip. You go from mandatory water wings directly into getting pushed into the ocean and Google shouting “Good luck!!”
  - officeplant 7mo ago
    >the one I used in high school was locked down to basically a kiosk. The Macbook Neo will be no different if the school is actually managing them properly.
  - seabrookmx 7mo ago
    You don't have to root them to do cool shit anymore. They have a full Linux (Debian based) environment you can enable with a single toggle in the settings. Any GUI apps you install via apt get their icons dropped in the system tray and their windows are rendered via Wayland.
  - cestith 7mo ago
    macOS or Windows can be similarly locked down. In the schools, the school locks it down. In many companies, there are management tools like JAMF, InTune, or NinjaOne that lock down laptops, desktops, tablets, and cell phones a little or completely.
    - saagarjha 7mo ago
      With a Chromebook, there is one thing to lock down. On a Mac, there are a lot of things to do, because the whole point of it is that it's a normal computer.
butILoveLife 7mo ago
> The Macbook Neo is an awesome machine for it's cost/value Uh... if you need to compile for iOS, sure. But outside of that, no its not. You are literally just paying the Apple tax that they deliberately choose.
- hylaride 7mo ago
  Look, MacOS has certainly rotted over the past few years, but the primary reason I use it is because it's still a hundred times nicer to use than Windows (which is also regressing for worse reasons - shoving in AI and ads instead of benign neglect). It's still the best desktop UNIX experience, especially since cheap PC laptops (and until very recently expensive ones) almost always have horrible build quality. It's also within only the last few years that PC trackpads came anywhere near the trackpads on Apple machines. Sometimes what you call a "tax" is literally some of us wanting quality.
  - butILoveLife 7mo ago
    Oh man, you NEED to use Fedora. Fedora is the best OS humanity has ever made. No exaguration. There needs to be the best, and its Fedora. Linux gets a bad reputation because 20-ish years ago Ubuntu sent out free CDs and became the dominant OS. Ubuntu/Mint is part of Debian family, outdated linux. They call outdated Linux 'stable', but its not stable like a table. Its software version frozen. Bugs that are fixed today wont get those fixes for 2 years. Not to mention, a new mouse you buy from amazon/nvidia card/web video player wont work due to the outdated nature of these distros. (And yes, I know you can do surgery to update it, but no one likes that) Fedora is not Arch. Fedora is the consumer grade Red Hat.
    - anthk 7mo ago
      Fedora Silverblue it's better and Cosmic Desktop looks good for a DE in every release (upcoming 44). For some isolated and rollbackable option, your only options are Silverblue and Guix for the hard way. If you use Nonguix for Guix, on your own, but I'd only use a nonfree kernel in an emergency (the wireless adapter somehow gets broken and the alternative is to boot the OS with propietary fw in order to buy a new one). And in that case I would blacklist every propietary fw except for the wireless ones. And, yes, I have an overlaid Linux-Libre kernel in SilverBlue.
mauzybwy 7mo ago
Man I got a computer engineering degree in 2015 with a $200 Chromebook chrooted into Debian. And I worked professionally for years on an 8gb MacBook Air. The Neo is definitely something younger me would be interested in.
- xattt 7mo ago
  > $200 Chromebook chrooted into Debian Are there even any x86 Chromebooks left at that price point? They are only one that are still capable of chrooting into Linux. ARM Chromebooks remain locked up.
  - mattnewton 7mo ago
    There were a bunch of intel atom ones IIRC. I got my degree with a used EEEpc with one of those.
    - xyzzy_plugh 7mo ago
      As did I. The most unbelievable part is that we used that tiny keyboard.
      - uka 7mo ago
        EEEPc ? Oh, I used to dream of having an EEEPc ... I got my degree using old C64 - had to manually encrypt packets with pen and paper to use https. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k
  - officeplant 7mo ago
    ARM chromebooks run the Debian containers just fine. It's just at settings toggle to enable it and you don't even need dev mode.
  - toast0 7mo ago
    Looking at BestBuy, category chromebook, the first one that comes up is $150, intel n4500. I don't know if this is particularly current or what, or if it's easy to setup to run another OS or whatever, but it meets your price and architecture criteria. https://www.bestbuy.com/product/hp-14-chromebook-intel-celeron-n4500-2021-4gb-memory-64gb-emmc-modern-grey/JJGQJQJK9P/sku/6612977 https://www.bestbuy.com/product/hp-14-chromebook-intel-celer...
BoxOfRain 7mo ago
When my mates at school had the aero glass effect on the new Windows, my ancient hand-me-down laptop wouldn't even try to run it. It could however run Compiz somewhat if it was persuaded very hard! That's basically the reason I learned Linux initially, and those hours debugging video driver issues would serve me well later on.
nine_k 7mo ago
A kid looking for the best bang for the carefully saved buck would buy a used machine off eBay, for less than $599, and more capable. An M1 MBP 2021 with 16GB would cost about this much; an M1 Macbook Air, or an M1 Mac Mini with 16 GB would cost half as much. A ton of beefy, perfectly Linux-ready used laptops can be had for under $350. So this is only for the kids who are obsessed not just with computers, but brand-new computers. Which is a different demographic.
- Ancapistani 7mo ago
  It's also for parents who want to give their kids a "real computer" without breaking the bank. My 12-year-old wanted a laptop to build mods for games. I got her a new M1 Macbook 8GB - $425 from Walmart, refurbished. My 17-year-old wanted a laptop for college, but wasn't sure what she needed or wanted yet. I gave her my 2020 M1 MBP. If either of those situations arose today, I'd get them a Neo.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  It's for kids and parents who bought into marketing and thinks that they need a apple product to be an artist or to be cool and not nerdy but can't afford an apple computer with decent specs.
Ancapistani 7mo ago
I went through a two-year period where I didn't have a decent job and couldn't afford a computer of any kind for myself. I ended up spending some time volunteering for a local non-profit, and they gave me an "old laptop" they had in storage. This was in ~2005. It was a Sony Vaio, and the only thing I really remember about the hardware/specs is that it had a physical scroll widget under the touchpad on the edge of the case. Software-wise, it was running some relatively locked down version of Windows. I installed Arch on it and used it to rebuild and manage the non-profit's website. The other thing that I remember from it is that it was my entrance into using the terminal as my primary interface - the first place I used Vim regularly, and the first time I'd installed tmux. One day I was trying to test a dropdown or something on their website, and discovered that my touchpad didn't work. It turned out to have been broken by an Arch update, which wasn't terribly surprising. What was surprising is that once I'd traced down the issue and corrected it, I realized that it had been broken for almost two weeks. I'd used that computer every day and hadn't needed to use a mouse even once.
- opan 7mo ago
  > realized that it had been broken for almost two weeks. I'd used that computer every day and hadn't needed to use a mouse even once. I had a similar experience on a smaller scale a few weeks ago. I keep an extra keyboard of my preferred model (Pinky4) in a backpack to take on the go with me, but I only have one pointing device I really like (Ploopy Classic Trackball), so I pack up my one and only as needed. I'd gotten home, started using my computer, and an hour or two passed before I reached for the trackball and noticed it wasn't there. It was still in my backpack. I've got Sway keybinds to jump between my most-used programs instantly, and use a lot of terminal stuff as well. I can definitely imagine if I were on a low-end machine I'd go even longer without noticing.
pentagrama 7mo ago
And Chromebooks aren't only a web browser, are only an Android web browser. I used one and it has the android play store to install apps, thank god FF at least supports extensions, but many apps lack features of the desktop counterparts, the layouts are designed only for mobile and on desktop looks terrible (including FF android).

saagarjha 7mo ago

When Chromebooks originally came out, that was not an option. And almost all school-issued computers will not let you do this.

tosti 7mo ago
It was possible on the Acer model I got when it first came out, but it was still useless. A switch that wiped the whole thing back to defaults was needed to open a terminal and from there a shell script could install Ubuntu. It still ran the unmodifiable chromeos kernel with no updates and without some of the modules I'd like. And then the screen died. It was junk. The EeePC was cheaper, lasted much longer and had Debian out of the box.
zeta0134 7mo ago
I've owned and used the CR-48 prototype Chromebook model, which very well did have a developer mode and a third kernel option built right in. Ran Ubuntu on it with no issues. This has been possible since before the device family was officially available for purchase. The school thing is different, but also hardly unique. A school issued macbook is often similarly locked down and unusable as a dev machine, due to the student lacking permissions to install anything the school deems dangerous.
creshal 7mo ago
That includes school-issued Macs, so I don't see how that's an argument against Chromebooks.
ghoulishly 7mo ago
Author of the post here. You nailed it here; I used Chromebook as the example in my post since the one I used in high school was locked down to basically a kiosk. Couldn’t even open dev tools, much less root it. Such a wild departure from the eMacs I used in my elementary school’s library where I could set bonkers `defaults write` commands and customize every aspect of my account. If I got a Chromebook as a personal machine as a kid, I probably would’ve rooted it and see what I could do, but growing up, the beauty of the Mac (in that Snow Leopard era) was progressive disclosure. I could start on the happy path and have a perfectly stable machine, then customize the behaviors through the terminal, see what it does, mess with the system files, see what breaks, revert it, then go back to using iMovie like normal. In my (admittedly limited) time using a rooted Chromebook, it’s much more like a switch flip. You go from mandatory water wings directly into getting pushed into the ocean and Google shouting “Good luck!!”
- officeplant 7mo ago
  >the one I used in high school was locked down to basically a kiosk. The Macbook Neo will be no different if the school is actually managing them properly.
- seabrookmx 7mo ago
  You don't have to root them to do cool shit anymore. They have a full Linux (Debian based) environment you can enable with a single toggle in the settings. Any GUI apps you install via apt get their icons dropped in the system tray and their windows are rendered via Wayland.
- cestith 7mo ago
  macOS or Windows can be similarly locked down. In the schools, the school locks it down. In many companies, there are management tools like JAMF, InTune, or NinjaOne that lock down laptops, desktops, tablets, and cell phones a little or completely.
  - saagarjha 7mo ago
    With a Chromebook, there is one thing to lock down. On a Mac, there are a lot of things to do, because the whole point of it is that it's a normal computer.

butILoveLife 7mo ago

> The Macbook Neo is an awesome machine for it's cost/value Uh... if you need to compile for iOS, sure. But outside of that, no its not. You are literally just paying the Apple tax that they deliberately choose.

hylaride 7mo ago
Look, MacOS has certainly rotted over the past few years, but the primary reason I use it is because it's still a hundred times nicer to use than Windows (which is also regressing for worse reasons - shoving in AI and ads instead of benign neglect). It's still the best desktop UNIX experience, especially since cheap PC laptops (and until very recently expensive ones) almost always have horrible build quality. It's also within only the last few years that PC trackpads came anywhere near the trackpads on Apple machines. Sometimes what you call a "tax" is literally some of us wanting quality.
- butILoveLife 7mo ago
  Oh man, you NEED to use Fedora. Fedora is the best OS humanity has ever made. No exaguration. There needs to be the best, and its Fedora. Linux gets a bad reputation because 20-ish years ago Ubuntu sent out free CDs and became the dominant OS. Ubuntu/Mint is part of Debian family, outdated linux. They call outdated Linux 'stable', but its not stable like a table. Its software version frozen. Bugs that are fixed today wont get those fixes for 2 years. Not to mention, a new mouse you buy from amazon/nvidia card/web video player wont work due to the outdated nature of these distros. (And yes, I know you can do surgery to update it, but no one likes that) Fedora is not Arch. Fedora is the consumer grade Red Hat.
  - anthk 7mo ago
    Fedora Silverblue it's better and Cosmic Desktop looks good for a DE in every release (upcoming 44). For some isolated and rollbackable option, your only options are Silverblue and Guix for the hard way. If you use Nonguix for Guix, on your own, but I'd only use a nonfree kernel in an emergency (the wireless adapter somehow gets broken and the alternative is to boot the OS with propietary fw in order to buy a new one). And in that case I would blacklist every propietary fw except for the wireless ones. And, yes, I have an overlaid Linux-Libre kernel in SilverBlue.

mauzybwy 7mo ago

Man I got a computer engineering degree in 2015 with a $200 Chromebook chrooted into Debian. And I worked professionally for years on an 8gb MacBook Air. The Neo is definitely something younger me would be interested in.

xattt 7mo ago
> $200 Chromebook chrooted into Debian Are there even any x86 Chromebooks left at that price point? They are only one that are still capable of chrooting into Linux. ARM Chromebooks remain locked up.
- mattnewton 7mo ago
  There were a bunch of intel atom ones IIRC. I got my degree with a used EEEpc with one of those.
  - xyzzy_plugh 7mo ago
    As did I. The most unbelievable part is that we used that tiny keyboard.
    - uka 7mo ago
      EEEPc ? Oh, I used to dream of having an EEEPc ... I got my degree using old C64 - had to manually encrypt packets with pen and paper to use https. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k
- officeplant 7mo ago
  ARM chromebooks run the Debian containers just fine. It's just at settings toggle to enable it and you don't even need dev mode.
- toast0 7mo ago
  Looking at BestBuy, category chromebook, the first one that comes up is $150, intel n4500. I don't know if this is particularly current or what, or if it's easy to setup to run another OS or whatever, but it meets your price and architecture criteria. https://www.bestbuy.com/product/hp-14-chromebook-intel-celeron-n4500-2021-4gb-memory-64gb-emmc-modern-grey/JJGQJQJK9P/sku/6612977 https://www.bestbuy.com/product/hp-14-chromebook-intel-celer...

BoxOfRain 7mo ago

When my mates at school had the aero glass effect on the new Windows, my ancient hand-me-down laptop wouldn't even try to run it. It could however run Compiz somewhat if it was persuaded very hard! That's basically the reason I learned Linux initially, and those hours debugging video driver issues would serve me well later on.

nine_k 7mo ago

A kid looking for the best bang for the carefully saved buck would buy a used machine off eBay, for less than $599, and more capable. An M1 MBP 2021 with 16GB would cost about this much; an M1 Macbook Air, or an M1 Mac Mini with 16 GB would cost half as much. A ton of beefy, perfectly Linux-ready used laptops can be had for under $350. So this is only for the kids who are obsessed not just with computers, but brand-new computers. Which is a different demographic.

Ancapistani 7mo ago
It's also for parents who want to give their kids a "real computer" without breaking the bank. My 12-year-old wanted a laptop to build mods for games. I got her a new M1 Macbook 8GB - $425 from Walmart, refurbished. My 17-year-old wanted a laptop for college, but wasn't sure what she needed or wanted yet. I gave her my 2020 M1 MBP. If either of those situations arose today, I'd get them a Neo.
autoexec 7mo ago
It's for kids and parents who bought into marketing and thinks that they need a apple product to be an artist or to be cool and not nerdy but can't afford an apple computer with decent specs.

Ancapistani 7mo ago

I went through a two-year period where I didn't have a decent job and couldn't afford a computer of any kind for myself. I ended up spending some time volunteering for a local non-profit, and they gave me an "old laptop" they had in storage. This was in ~2005. It was a Sony Vaio, and the only thing I really remember about the hardware/specs is that it had a physical scroll widget under the touchpad on the edge of the case. Software-wise, it was running some relatively locked down version of Windows. I installed Arch on it and used it to rebuild and manage the non-profit's website. The other thing that I remember from it is that it was my entrance into using the terminal as my primary interface - the first place I used Vim regularly, and the first time I'd installed tmux. One day I was trying to test a dropdown or something on their website, and discovered that my touchpad didn't work. It turned out to have been broken by an Arch update, which wasn't terribly surprising. What was surprising is that once I'd traced down the issue and corrected it, I realized that it had been broken for almost two weeks. I'd used that computer every day and hadn't needed to use a mouse even once.

opan 7mo ago
> realized that it had been broken for almost two weeks. I'd used that computer every day and hadn't needed to use a mouse even once. I had a similar experience on a smaller scale a few weeks ago. I keep an extra keyboard of my preferred model (Pinky4) in a backpack to take on the go with me, but I only have one pointing device I really like (Ploopy Classic Trackball), so I pack up my one and only as needed. I'd gotten home, started using my computer, and an hour or two passed before I reached for the trackball and noticed it wasn't there. It was still in my backpack. I've got Sway keybinds to jump between my most-used programs instantly, and use a lot of terminal stuff as well. I can definitely imagine if I were on a low-end machine I'd go even longer without noticing.

pentagrama 7mo ago

And Chromebooks aren't only a web browser, are only an Android web browser. I used one and it has the android play store to install apps, thank god FF at least supports extensions, but many apps lack features of the desktop counterparts, the layouts are designed only for mobile and on desktop looks terrible (including FF android).