4 ms·

Oh, I mean I wasn't impressed with the terminal emulator itself. At least when I tried it, it seemed to have problems with some ctrl-sequences (as in, other th

by jlgreco 13y ago

Oh, I mean I wasn't impressed with the terminal emulator itself. At least when I tried it, it seemed to have problems with some ctrl-sequences (as in, other things would get them instead of whatever I was running in the terminal emulator). I also was not very impressed with the weird cursor fading thing it does. Right now I'm running Debian Wheezy on my Pixel with a recent kernel that I built myself (the 3.0.whatever kernel Wheezy is on right now doesn't have touchpad support for the Pixel). The Pixel is only worth the cash if you have very specific use cases. First off, I don't consider it worth the price with ChromeOS at all, so you've got to put a regular distro on it. ChromeOS might be tolerable with cheaper hardware, but for what I paid for the Pixel I just can't stomach it. The hardware itself is underpowered (i5, little ram, runs hot as all hell if you start running a long build or something (seriously, I've burnt myself.)) and has very little storage, so your usage pattern should be lightweight (I've used tiling window managers instead of fancy DEs for years so that is a-okay for me.) The screen is absolutely fantastic; best thing I have ever seen, and the real reason I bought it. The screen is so good that, despite the downsides I've listed, I am very pleased with my purchase. In short: Upsides: Fantastic screen. Linus uses one, so shit works. Solid build quality. Downsides: Expensive, underpowered, can get hot as all fuck. I think Google missed the mark with the Pixel. It makes a nice tech-demo for the screen and their ability to make things out of aluminum, but it isn't something I could recommend to anyone with 'normal' usage patterns. Don't buy one unless you absolutely know a high DPI screen is what you want, and know that the specs will accommodate you.

ufmace 13y ago
Interesting, I was thinking about getting one for browsing/webapp use and remote development over ssh. In addition to the screen, I also like that ChromeOS sounds like it handles OS updates much better than anything else - free, seamless, automatic OS updates for life apparently. Better than Windows 8 trying to turn the computer into a giant tablet or OS X creeping further towards being a giant iOS device. Or linux distro updates breaking things (at least that's been my experience with linux). And all have a lot of overhead as far as installation time.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  If ChromeOS is the sort of thing that you can be satisfied with, then the Pixel may or may not be worth it; it is hard for me to judge that since I'm not really a fan of ChromeOS.
- riskable 13y ago
  I have a Samsung ARM Chromebook and I use it all the time. Way more than I thought I'd use it. I bought it as a testing platform for Gate One (https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne) but I end up using it most when, "someone on the Internet is wrong." (haha). So I'll be chilling out in my Lay-Z-Boy with my family watching a kids movie (that we've watched like six times), surfing the web on my phone and lo and behold someone will say something that needs an old fashioned Internet whomping--with references, snide remarks, and lots of puns. The type of thing for which a phone (software) keyboard isn't suited. As in, "I cannot let this person's false statement go unchallenged!" So I dash to the office ("Honey, where's my super suit?") and I have a choice to make: Un-cable and remove my nicely-mounted (on a cool swiveling arm!) dual-SSD Acer S5 laptop and haul it back to the living room (you know, so I can share the experience with my family =) or I could grab the Chromebook which is conveniently located near the door and has only a single, tiny power connector. In less than 60 seconds (maybe 30 if I don't grab a drink on the way back!) I will be back in my Lay-Z-Boy, furiously typing away on the Chromebook. Saving the world from the ignorant, shills, and Microsoft fanboys.
Nursie 13y ago
>> Oh, I mean I wasn't impressed with the terminal emulator itself. At least when I tried it, it seemed to have problems with some ctrl-sequences (as in, other things would get them instead of whatever I was running in the terminal emulator). This is true, my go-to text mode editor (yes you can laugh) nano has Ctrl-O for write-out and that brings up the ChromeOS open dialog instead. It's most irritating. I might wait for the next-gen pixel then, if there is one. I would like a high-dpi screen and I do usually work on remote systems, but it sounds like there's a problem if it gets that hot when you put any load on it.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Heat is absolutely a problem with the current Pixel. My suspicion is that the Pixel can probably cool itself well under loads you would expect in ChromeOS, but if you fall outside of that usage pattern it becomes problematic. (There probably aren't a lot of ways to peg the CPU at 100% for minutes on end in ChromeOS while not in dev-mode.) > if there is one. Yeah, that is a big if. I don't have any sort of sales figures for the current Pixel, but I haven't encountered many other people with one... I suspect it isn't selling well.
  - derefr 13y ago
    > There probably aren't a lot of ways to peg the CPU at 100% for minutes on end in ChromeOS while not in dev-mode. Load a webpage with just one or two screenshot-sized animated GIFs. Browsers are really bad at this; I wonder how many years it's been since the GIF rendering code was touched in most implementations.
    - riskable 13y ago
      Interesting. On my phone pages loaded with animated GIFs are slow as molasses but on my regular ol' Linux (Core i7, Intel graphics) desktop I don't think I've been to a page where I experienced any sort of slowness. For example, this page: http://imgur.com/a/Htgmq http://imgur.com/a/Htgmq (Animals Staring, SFW) That'll bring my Samsung Galaxy S4 (a very current quad-core phone) to a crawl but my desktop won't even get the chrome process above 10%. Maybe it's GPU-related? I wonder if Chrome for Android even uses the GPU, hmm...

by jlgreco 13y ago

ufmace 13y ago

Interesting, I was thinking about getting one for browsing/webapp use and remote development over ssh. In addition to the screen, I also like that ChromeOS sounds like it handles OS updates much better than anything else - free, seamless, automatic OS updates for life apparently. Better than Windows 8 trying to turn the computer into a giant tablet or OS X creeping further towards being a giant iOS device. Or linux distro updates breaking things (at least that's been my experience with linux). And all have a lot of overhead as far as installation time.

jlgreco 13y ago
If ChromeOS is the sort of thing that you can be satisfied with, then the Pixel may or may not be worth it; it is hard for me to judge that since I'm not really a fan of ChromeOS.
riskable 13y ago
I have a Samsung ARM Chromebook and I use it all the time. Way more than I thought I'd use it. I bought it as a testing platform for Gate One (https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne) but I end up using it most when, "someone on the Internet is wrong." (haha). So I'll be chilling out in my Lay-Z-Boy with my family watching a kids movie (that we've watched like six times), surfing the web on my phone and lo and behold someone will say something that needs an old fashioned Internet whomping--with references, snide remarks, and lots of puns. The type of thing for which a phone (software) keyboard isn't suited. As in, "I cannot let this person's false statement go unchallenged!" So I dash to the office ("Honey, where's my super suit?") and I have a choice to make: Un-cable and remove my nicely-mounted (on a cool swiveling arm!) dual-SSD Acer S5 laptop and haul it back to the living room (you know, so I can share the experience with my family =) or I could grab the Chromebook which is conveniently located near the door and has only a single, tiny power connector. In less than 60 seconds (maybe 30 if I don't grab a drink on the way back!) I will be back in my Lay-Z-Boy, furiously typing away on the Chromebook. Saving the world from the ignorant, shills, and Microsoft fanboys.

Nursie 13y ago

>> Oh, I mean I wasn't impressed with the terminal emulator itself. At least when I tried it, it seemed to have problems with some ctrl-sequences (as in, other things would get them instead of whatever I was running in the terminal emulator). This is true, my go-to text mode editor (yes you can laugh) nano has Ctrl-O for write-out and that brings up the ChromeOS open dialog instead. It's most irritating. I might wait for the next-gen pixel then, if there is one. I would like a high-dpi screen and I do usually work on remote systems, but it sounds like there's a problem if it gets that hot when you put any load on it.

jlgreco 13y ago
Heat is absolutely a problem with the current Pixel. My suspicion is that the Pixel can probably cool itself well under loads you would expect in ChromeOS, but if you fall outside of that usage pattern it becomes problematic. (There probably aren't a lot of ways to peg the CPU at 100% for minutes on end in ChromeOS while not in dev-mode.) > if there is one. Yeah, that is a big if. I don't have any sort of sales figures for the current Pixel, but I haven't encountered many other people with one... I suspect it isn't selling well.
- derefr 13y ago
  > There probably aren't a lot of ways to peg the CPU at 100% for minutes on end in ChromeOS while not in dev-mode. Load a webpage with just one or two screenshot-sized animated GIFs. Browsers are really bad at this; I wonder how many years it's been since the GIF rendering code was touched in most implementations.
  - riskable 13y ago
    Interesting. On my phone pages loaded with animated GIFs are slow as molasses but on my regular ol' Linux (Core i7, Intel graphics) desktop I don't think I've been to a page where I experienced any sort of slowness. For example, this page: http://imgur.com/a/Htgmq http://imgur.com/a/Htgmq (Animals Staring, SFW) That'll bring my Samsung Galaxy S4 (a very current quad-core phone) to a crawl but my desktop won't even get the chrome process above 10%. Maybe it's GPU-related? I wonder if Chrome for Android even uses the GPU, hmm...