5 ms·

I recently bought a chromebook, and was surprised at how nice the user experience was. Tasks like opening tabs and loading pages seemed subjectively faster than

I recently bought a chromebook, and was surprised at how nice the user experience was. Tasks like opening tabs and loading pages seemed subjectively faster than doing the same on my 4GHz desktop. I also like how my attention was never consumed by irrelevant details like it always is in a desktop os. In places where GNOME treats the user like an idiot by needlessly hiding useful functionality, Chrome makes specific tasks quick and painless. Surely, the fact that Chrome tries to do less, and benefits from a clean slate helps this, but there is still a very clear winner in this comparison. I'd use it (chrome os) a lot if it had decent native text editing, and wasn't a botnet. Hopefully a WM comparable in performance and UI design to Chrome's will be supported in GNU/Linux distros soon.

abrezas 13y ago
what do you think is missing in text editing?
agumonkey 13y ago
I played with a c720p last week, I was impressed by the responsiveness of it, I assumed it was a good hardware basis and never thought the software architecture was different.
netcan 13y ago
"I'd use it (chrome os) a lot if it had decent native text editing" I'd buy one or two for relatives if it had skype. Seems chrome is one feature/app away for a lot of people. Reminds me of this. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
- makmanalp 13y ago
  I think as long as google voice / hangouts is competing for that position, it's unlikely. Skype for linux has historically been kind of a disaster, so I don't expect a chrome app effort from them either.
  - netcan 13y ago
    Unfortunately the recipients I have in mind use skype to talk to their kids & friends. It's non negotiable. My guess is that there are a lot of use cases where 1 or 2 missing apps/features are non negotiable. IMO the solution is to gradually eliminate barriers to switching from windows. This probably means treating the initial hypothesis that the web is all you need as a starting point and trying to keep chrome's complexity down to Android levels while gradually adding "bloat". I still think ChromOS could take a big slice of Window's market share, maybe bigger than Apple mac.
    - Touche 13y ago
      > It's non negotiable. That's silly, WebRTC sites are popping up every where. My personal favorite is appear.in, you can have your family chat with you just by them clicking a link. What is it about Skype that makes it the only solution they're willing to use?
      - fidotron 13y ago
        Cases I know of are things like Smart TVs with Skype integration and no chance of supporting WebRTC. Skype did a good job of getting embedded on lots of devices.
    - VikingCoder 13y ago
      "It's non negotiable." It may feel that way right now, but no, it's not. That's like saying, "The recipients I have in mind use AOL Instant Messenger. They're never going to switch to Facebook."
  - thefreeman 13y ago
    Skype works perfectly fine on linux natively and has for a while.
    - hga 13y ago
      Agreed ... well, mostly, I've got one of my machines with an older version that always hangs up when I try to answer a call. But that was an "upgrade", and if I'd tried to upgrade it again after noticing I'd probably be OK. But the current version for Debian wheezy works great, and I just switched my 80 year old father to Debian with Gnome Classic (he has very few windows open at a time so it's OK) and that version of Skype, and he's quite happy with the result. Heck, he might even be using Chrome instead of his familiar Firefox if Chrome's tabs paid attention to how big fonts should be. Awful oversight for those who's eyesight isn't so good.
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  I notice that the Android text editor leaves much to be desired too. The wrapping algorithm appears to be really slow, particularly evident in GMail on a tablet if you happen to be writing a reply longer than 2 sentences long (particularly apparent on my Xoom).
- tmzt 13y ago
  If Web RTC video chat comes to outlook.com it will be interoperable with Skype. Whether that will work with ChromeOS I don't know.
userbinator 13y ago
> Tasks like opening tabs and loading pages seemed subjectively faster than doing the same on my 4GHz desktop. That is because your desktop can also do a lot more (and likely is doing a lot in the background.) What is basically a bootable browser, not so much. If you disable unneeded services and drivers in your desktop OS, and have nothing more than a browser open, I think the speed would be comparable.
- Already__Taken 13y ago
  There's a lot of crazy that goes on in a desktop OS that must be cruft left over from legacy. I use windows all the time. If you put a bad CD in it you can lock the whole window manager up while it's thrashing the CD to be head or tales of it. Sometimes crash it. As soon as you hit the hardware eject it will free back up. Reading a CD shouldn't do that. There was the post on HN some months back about the tickrate in windows being set by random applications super low and not being put back up so it uses lots of extra power for no reason. I just wanted to say the hand wavy "Yeah but X does a lot more Y" as some kind of excuse is all too common.
  - ksk 13y ago
    >There's a lot of crazy that goes on in a desktop OS that must be cruft left over from legacy. I agree with you but it depends on what you mean by cruft. There aren't really any windows features that actively consume (noticeable) resources and are not useful to someone. Designing feature rich software for a billion different usecases is quite hard. Its reasonably easy to make one-off products that just do one thing well. > If you put a bad CD in it you can lock the whole window manager up while it's thrashing the CD to be head or tales of it. Sometimes crash it. As soon as you hit the hardware eject it will free back up. Wow.. are you running Windows 95 ? :) The CD thing was common back then. The only reason this can happen on NT is because of some really buggy driver/hardware combination but even that is highly unlikely. Whats far more likely is you have some kind of buggy explorer plugin that is attempting to generate helpful thumbnails or something while enumerating an unreadable medium. AFAIK Explorer is still single-threaded for the most part for backwards compatibility - which worsens the impact. (Unfortunately a lot of this crap is preinstalled by the OEM) IMO Microsoft made an enormous mistake by allowing third parties to extend their OS in ways that can seriously impact user experience like that. Learn from Apple, MS ! >There was the post on HN some months back about the tickrate in windows being set by random applications super low and not being put back up so it uses lots of extra power for no reason. Are you talking about timer coalescing? I believe you cant change that setting without a reboot. Or perhaps you mean something else.
omaranto 13y ago
I borrowed my father's chromebook a couple of months ago and was surprised to see it came with vim, so I found the native text editing not only decent but as good as on any other computer. :) (I think you might need to enable developer mode to use vim, though.)
72deluxe 13y ago
"I also like how my attention was never consumed by irrelevant details like it always is in a desktop os." It is odd but I do not find a desktop OS annoying if set up properly. In particular, I felt this wave of relief after reverting to GNOME2 on my Linux VM and particularly this wave of "the OS isn't interfering with me" when moving to Mac OSX. Perhaps it is coming from Windows with the incessant fade-in bubble-shaped popups bottom right near the dreaded notification area that does this? If Windows properly managed this, it wouldn't be so bad. Such a small difference between the main system desktop layouts but a large difference in the feeling of being constantly flustered from an attention-seeking system. Weird. (Of course, removal of "distracting" user-interface elements can go to the extreme, as shown in the release notes for Xcode 5 where the toolbar has been refined "to remove distracting elements" or the over-the-top UI culling that has taken hold of GNOME3, eg. the recent changes to gedit as highlighted on the Planet GNOME blog, apparently for the sake of "making it less distracting". Balance is needed!)
- userbinator 13y ago
  Notifications in Windows can be configured, and often come from third-party programs; I use Windows and rarely get any system tray notifications (that's what those popup balloons are called) - the most common one I see is when the state of the network connection changes, and that's definitely useful information for me. I've tried OS X and I can definitely see how some people like it, but I felt like it was too "opaque", like it was hiding a lot of info from me. > Of course, removal of "distracting" user-interface elements can go to the extreme IMHO UIs have already gone a bit too far in this direction. The funny thing is that I have a feeling a lot of the same people who think this often useful information is an "unnecessary distraction" are the ones who do not use adblockers and such when viewing webpages, and seemingly have no problem consuming the content with all manner of attention-getting adverts spewed at them.
  - 72deluxe 13y ago
    Very true about being too opaque on Mac OSX sometimes. It forces you to run with an iTerm open all the time to keep your Unix skills sharp, which is a good thing, right? I prefer falling system tray notifications "big balloons" :-) Btw, I am not trying to dismiss Windows. I use it daily and love it. But sometimes the inundation of popup balloons is a bit overkill, but that's only when using infested computers...
joliv 13y ago
I use Secure Shell on my chromebook to SSH into vim. It's pretty nice.

abrezas 13y ago

what do you think is missing in text editing?

agumonkey 13y ago

I played with a c720p last week, I was impressed by the responsiveness of it, I assumed it was a good hardware basis and never thought the software architecture was different.

netcan 13y ago

"I'd use it (chrome os) a lot if it had decent native text editing" I'd buy one or two for relatives if it had skype. Seems chrome is one feature/app away for a lot of people. Reminds me of this. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

makmanalp 13y ago
I think as long as google voice / hangouts is competing for that position, it's unlikely. Skype for linux has historically been kind of a disaster, so I don't expect a chrome app effort from them either.
- netcan 13y ago
  Unfortunately the recipients I have in mind use skype to talk to their kids & friends. It's non negotiable. My guess is that there are a lot of use cases where 1 or 2 missing apps/features are non negotiable. IMO the solution is to gradually eliminate barriers to switching from windows. This probably means treating the initial hypothesis that the web is all you need as a starting point and trying to keep chrome's complexity down to Android levels while gradually adding "bloat". I still think ChromOS could take a big slice of Window's market share, maybe bigger than Apple mac.
  - Touche 13y ago
    > It's non negotiable. That's silly, WebRTC sites are popping up every where. My personal favorite is appear.in, you can have your family chat with you just by them clicking a link. What is it about Skype that makes it the only solution they're willing to use?
    - fidotron 13y ago
      Cases I know of are things like Smart TVs with Skype integration and no chance of supporting WebRTC. Skype did a good job of getting embedded on lots of devices.
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    "It's non negotiable." It may feel that way right now, but no, it's not. That's like saying, "The recipients I have in mind use AOL Instant Messenger. They're never going to switch to Facebook."
- thefreeman 13y ago
  Skype works perfectly fine on linux natively and has for a while.
  - hga 13y ago
    Agreed ... well, mostly, I've got one of my machines with an older version that always hangs up when I try to answer a call. But that was an "upgrade", and if I'd tried to upgrade it again after noticing I'd probably be OK. But the current version for Debian wheezy works great, and I just switched my 80 year old father to Debian with Gnome Classic (he has very few windows open at a time so it's OK) and that version of Skype, and he's quite happy with the result. Heck, he might even be using Chrome instead of his familiar Firefox if Chrome's tabs paid attention to how big fonts should be. Awful oversight for those who's eyesight isn't so good.
72deluxe 13y ago
I notice that the Android text editor leaves much to be desired too. The wrapping algorithm appears to be really slow, particularly evident in GMail on a tablet if you happen to be writing a reply longer than 2 sentences long (particularly apparent on my Xoom).
tmzt 13y ago
If Web RTC video chat comes to outlook.com it will be interoperable with Skype. Whether that will work with ChromeOS I don't know.

userbinator 13y ago

> Tasks like opening tabs and loading pages seemed subjectively faster than doing the same on my 4GHz desktop. That is because your desktop can also do a lot more (and likely is doing a lot in the background.) What is basically a bootable browser, not so much. If you disable unneeded services and drivers in your desktop OS, and have nothing more than a browser open, I think the speed would be comparable.

Already__Taken 13y ago
There's a lot of crazy that goes on in a desktop OS that must be cruft left over from legacy. I use windows all the time. If you put a bad CD in it you can lock the whole window manager up while it's thrashing the CD to be head or tales of it. Sometimes crash it. As soon as you hit the hardware eject it will free back up. Reading a CD shouldn't do that. There was the post on HN some months back about the tickrate in windows being set by random applications super low and not being put back up so it uses lots of extra power for no reason. I just wanted to say the hand wavy "Yeah but X does a lot more Y" as some kind of excuse is all too common.
- ksk 13y ago
  >There's a lot of crazy that goes on in a desktop OS that must be cruft left over from legacy. I agree with you but it depends on what you mean by cruft. There aren't really any windows features that actively consume (noticeable) resources and are not useful to someone. Designing feature rich software for a billion different usecases is quite hard. Its reasonably easy to make one-off products that just do one thing well. > If you put a bad CD in it you can lock the whole window manager up while it's thrashing the CD to be head or tales of it. Sometimes crash it. As soon as you hit the hardware eject it will free back up. Wow.. are you running Windows 95 ? :) The CD thing was common back then. The only reason this can happen on NT is because of some really buggy driver/hardware combination but even that is highly unlikely. Whats far more likely is you have some kind of buggy explorer plugin that is attempting to generate helpful thumbnails or something while enumerating an unreadable medium. AFAIK Explorer is still single-threaded for the most part for backwards compatibility - which worsens the impact. (Unfortunately a lot of this crap is preinstalled by the OEM) IMO Microsoft made an enormous mistake by allowing third parties to extend their OS in ways that can seriously impact user experience like that. Learn from Apple, MS ! >There was the post on HN some months back about the tickrate in windows being set by random applications super low and not being put back up so it uses lots of extra power for no reason. Are you talking about timer coalescing? I believe you cant change that setting without a reboot. Or perhaps you mean something else.

omaranto 13y ago

I borrowed my father's chromebook a couple of months ago and was surprised to see it came with vim, so I found the native text editing not only decent but as good as on any other computer. :) (I think you might need to enable developer mode to use vim, though.)

72deluxe 13y ago

"I also like how my attention was never consumed by irrelevant details like it always is in a desktop os." It is odd but I do not find a desktop OS annoying if set up properly. In particular, I felt this wave of relief after reverting to GNOME2 on my Linux VM and particularly this wave of "the OS isn't interfering with me" when moving to Mac OSX. Perhaps it is coming from Windows with the incessant fade-in bubble-shaped popups bottom right near the dreaded notification area that does this? If Windows properly managed this, it wouldn't be so bad. Such a small difference between the main system desktop layouts but a large difference in the feeling of being constantly flustered from an attention-seeking system. Weird. (Of course, removal of "distracting" user-interface elements can go to the extreme, as shown in the release notes for Xcode 5 where the toolbar has been refined "to remove distracting elements" or the over-the-top UI culling that has taken hold of GNOME3, eg. the recent changes to gedit as highlighted on the Planet GNOME blog, apparently for the sake of "making it less distracting". Balance is needed!)

userbinator 13y ago
Notifications in Windows can be configured, and often come from third-party programs; I use Windows and rarely get any system tray notifications (that's what those popup balloons are called) - the most common one I see is when the state of the network connection changes, and that's definitely useful information for me. I've tried OS X and I can definitely see how some people like it, but I felt like it was too "opaque", like it was hiding a lot of info from me. > Of course, removal of "distracting" user-interface elements can go to the extreme IMHO UIs have already gone a bit too far in this direction. The funny thing is that I have a feeling a lot of the same people who think this often useful information is an "unnecessary distraction" are the ones who do not use adblockers and such when viewing webpages, and seemingly have no problem consuming the content with all manner of attention-getting adverts spewed at them.
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  Very true about being too opaque on Mac OSX sometimes. It forces you to run with an iTerm open all the time to keep your Unix skills sharp, which is a good thing, right? I prefer falling system tray notifications "big balloons" :-) Btw, I am not trying to dismiss Windows. I use it daily and love it. But sometimes the inundation of popup balloons is a bit overkill, but that's only when using infested computers...

joliv 13y ago

I use Secure Shell on my chromebook to SSH into vim. It's pretty nice.