Any cheap old laptop works just as well if not better if you just want to use ssh into another box!
I personaly snapped up a nice Asus netbook with built in 3g modem, wifi and bluetooth and cuts a lovely battery life.
But a nice cheap chromebook is probably the best option for most unless you can find a cheap netbook of comparable use.
Though ironicly none have beat my old psion 5mx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5) for battery life and that can do ssh as well, sadly though IRDA and serial are not the cutting edge comm's standards. Have been a few that come close, but just not jumped out at me.
That said I'm still awaiting for something of that form factor with some modern love.
That all said if Mr Linux Linus is happy with a chromebook as a dev machince, then they must be doing something right, though a Chrome pixel just for SSH would be fiscal perversion on my budget.
> Any cheap old laptop works just as well if not better if you just want to use ssh into another box!
Agreed, and if you put Ubuntu on it (or the Chromebook), doesn't this all become much easier with its remote login from the login page feature? Not sure if any other distros have that too, but regardless, surely it'd be much easier?
>though a Chrome pixel just for SSH would be fiscal perversion on my budget.
According to the article a MacBook Air used to fill this role, totally agree that both are crazy expensive for that.
It's a true shame no manufacture has released a modern version of the Psion 5mx. If there is a market for Linux / BSD portables, that would fill it nicely.
A cheap netbook of the same price will invariably be worse in some way, since the Windows license cost is included, so they've had to cut corners somewhere, and it might not show in the specs list, but in the build quality of the device, its thinness/lightness, the quality of the display, etc
Not necessarily. Dell sold Ubuntu laptops that cost more than the Windows one, because they made money by charging software companies to have their software bundled with Windows. There's also the issue of scale- a production run of Linux laptops would sell considerably less than Windows ones.
Since the tablet fad, netbooks have stagnated and some lovely models for sale at silly cheap prices. As for this windows TAX, well, you are not oblidged to use it and the one I got was half the price of a Chromebook, what more can one say.
I am not sure I actually see myself doing development on this hardware. Maybe it is due to the type of work I am doing now and the requirement of the sheer amount of data/services running locally. But I wouldn't mind using this essentially as an operating environment with a few tmux sessions open.
The more that I tinker with OpenStack and generally setting up virtualized services I am beginning to be sway towards never necessarily needing to buy a desktop machine again.
Up until a few months ago my machines sat around just to collect dust. But I see a future where a Chromebook style machine can easily connect to a VPN with an OpenStack cloud powering development. Its actually quite damn easy now if you invest the time.
The only reason I do not do this now is that I have been unable to find a machine with decent enough resolution and great battery life. But I've told myself that my next laptop (right now a 15 inch MacBook Pro) will be something significantly smaller.
I just hope that the retina displays catch up with the rest of the industry.
The Samsung Chromebooks get 6-7hours of battery life.
You aren't getting Retina/Pixel resolution with the cheap Chromebook, but my Series 5 is 1280 x 800, which is the same resolution as the 13" Macbook Pro's (pre-retina) were. This is quite decent considering the average 15.6" cheapo laptop runs 1366 x 768.
I don't see the point in using a crippled operating system when it will prevent you from quickly editing a low res screen cast or editing an image in the GIMP. Machines in that price range have enough performance to do some of these tasks even if they're not optimal for them. If I'm on the move away from a bigger system I might still need to do it though, so not having that capacity just because of someone's "in the cloud" dream is silly.
It's already bad enough that Google maims some of the Nexus line by disabling tethering. Android is also inflexible in many ways regarding having a local easy to use file system etc. I personally can't wait to get off Android and onto Ubuntu mobile or Firefox OS.
As stated in the article, the "point" is to have the same functionality for a fraction of the cost. You can still run image editing software or whatever you'd run on your workstation using NX. That's somewhat inconvenient, but then it boots faster with no malware, and you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally. So it's a trade-off, not a "crippling" as you've put it. Some folks, like the author, barely notice a difference in quality yet save $1000, and that feels good.
you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally.
That's what scares me the most. Unless I have the option of not using Google's infrastructure, and can run my own "ChromeOS Storage/Auth Server" on a computer of my choice, then I'd never trust the OS. Google is expecting a surreal amount of trust that no single corporation should be given.
I can get the same functionality in terms of hardware at the more or less same cost, certainly not $1000 more as you claim. A 1.7gighz ARM or the other versions aren't more powerful than a 1.6gighz or higher Atom processor at the same price point.
And I can run a real operating system on that hardware with no problems. My laptop boots in less than 10 seconds and I trust Ubuntu just as much as a Chromebook for security. If you are worried about the security of local files you can encrypt your drive, very simply in the last few versions of Ubuntu but I don't bother, if needs be.
None of the points you make in favour of the Chromebook are exclusive to it, what's exclusive to it though is you can't get access to the vast flexibility of a local system and have to go through NX.
That's all fine for people who only do back-end stuff, or Google if they want their employees to "dog food" living in the cloud, but for someone who wants to be able to do normal everyday things like edit images, test locally or any of the many other advantages of a flexible system it doesn't really cut it. If there were locally running JavaScript equivalents for image editing and everything else we'd be a bit closer to feature parity but I still wouldn't see the major attraction.
>> None of the points you make in favour of the Chromebook are exclusive to it, what's exclusive to it though is you can't get access to the vast flexibility of a local system and have to go through NX.
Adding to that working with remote GUI apps simply sucks compared to running them locally, for all kinds of reasons. It's less responsive, applications don't always integrate well with the rest of the OS (think keyboard/language settings, terminal capabilities, reliable copy/paste), you lose things like local search, some applications you rarely use will not be available on the remote, and if your network connection goes down you lose your session. And who's going to set up and maintain the NX service? If having your work in the cloud matters a lot, I would much rather just mount some remote filesystem for storing it, and run all my dev tools locally.
I tend to agree I don't see the point here, since when is a cheap machine to SSH to some other box anything special, let alone a viable replacement for a dev system? I did stuff like this (SSH-ing to a remote host, editing webpages there, viewing the result locally) literally 10 years ago on a Pentium-233 laptop you couldn't even give away for free today because no-one would want to have it. For $250 there's a lot of decent notebooks that would do everything a Chromebook does, and adequately run a modern linux distro to boot.
$1000 is an exaggeration, but chromebooks really are significantly cheaper than netbooks/laptops: $250 ARM and $199 Celeron.
But you know, just now considering the restrictions that Apple, Google and Microsoft put on their mobile machines, because they can, creates a real opportunity for Firefox OS (and yes ubuntu). Though niche, as most consumers won't care... unless the restrictions go too far.
That's 2x the ram and I get 320 HD which even if you don't want to use it for storage it's pretty awesome when running any OS that supports virtual memory. Have you looked at how much virtual memory your average Linux distro ends up using?
That was just the first hit. There's plenty of machines in the same price range as a chromebook that have better specs, more power and therefore more freedom.
And arguably more than twice as powerful. You can run nearly every Windows app including games like Call of Duty, Portal, Farcry etc. You can run Photoshop, Lightroom, Office etc.. You can run VC++, gcc and even have room to store your project. All things you can't do on the same priced Chromebook.
Only 1 year ago before the Retina MBP every MBP being carried by the majority of geeks around Silicon Valley weighed 5.6lbs yet that did not stopped them from carrying them as laptops
Why would you want to use virtual memory? I bet that laptop has a 5400 rpm hard drive - there is no way I want it to be swapping on and off of it at every opportunity. The OS would grind to a halt.
For most developers' usage, you'd be better off with a 32gb SSD than with the 320gb slow-as-hell spinner drive.
Not to mention a cheap 15.6" laptop gets terrible battery life. My $250 Chromebook gets 6.5-7hours, even when running Ubuntu via crouton.
All the standard macbooks that have HDs come with 5400rpm HDs. Apparently the majority of Silicon Valley has no problems getting work done on a 5400rpm HD.
As for battery life I'd personally rather have a machine I can get real work done with shitty battery life than one with great battery life on which I can't get real work done. There's a huge list of things I can do on the machine with an HD, virtual memory, and a real OS that I can't do on the Chromebook. In fact Chrome will even run better on the machine with the HD as it won't kill off tabs when it gets low on memory. It also won't get low on memory as quick as it has twice the memory.
If price/value is the main concern a used 4-5 year old x86 laptop is a way better deal. I have an old HP nc8430 for this purpose. Sells on eBay for about $100-$150 these days. Blows away a low end ARM ChromeBook on performance, price and flexibility.
Actual computer as compared to what? A modern Atom processor with an SSD and a few gigs of RAM isn't a powerhouse, but it's plenty for dev work on the go unless you're a graphics programmer or you need a local copy of a large database etc.
The file storage is the one that made me leery. I solved the issue by using owncloud, which so far seems to be working pretty well. The performance could be better but I'm pretty sure that's due to my slow upload connection.
I don't get your last point though. Chrome OS has a pretty rapid pace of development and is getting new features every day. They also have tech support for those who need it.
Chromebooks are not that much cheaper. They don't give you that much extra battery life. They are extremely limited in functionality and I feel a proper "developer machine" should have more than just ssh.
All of the GSM ones tether fine. The Verizon Galaxy Nexus needed rooting or a workaround to tether.
That was more so a Verizon issue that Google's choice. Also remember that Verizon had disabled Google Wallet on that model in favor of the still not launched ISIS.
It's a moot point now because the Nexus 4 is GSM-only.
Nexus 7 3G bought outright entirely separately to any plan or network carrier. Tethering is entirely disabled and many forums confirm this.
And while I theoretically could I am not going to install a "cracked" version of Android from a l33td00d7 user on a php forum just to get a fundamentally basic and useful networking feature which is present in other installs of Android and which there was no reason to turn off. The whole point of buying a Nexus device was to get away from the crap modifications (like the constant nagging, with a loud beep, to update the "Facebook integration" stuff from my phone's manufacturer which can't be turned off) and lack of basic updates on non-pure Android devices. I wanted a pure Android experience, one of my strong desires was to use it for tethering, Google promised a pure experience and it was a deception (can't remember if it was actually stated somewhere in the fine print, but I certainly read loads about the specifications before purchase and didn't see any mention of it).
It's a disgrace and, along with a series of other pointless Apple-like restrictions worming their way into Android, it confirms Google is fully prepared to cripple things in the name of profits. And it's not even their own profits in this case, it was likely done at the behest of carriers and hugely damages what Nexus was supposed to be about and their brand, so it's even crazier.
So while Canonical might try to put Amazon integration into the Unity bar, they know that you have to be able to turn it off or they will lose their users. The people at Google on the other hand know they can get away with it, although they might lose a few power users (post hoc, after taking their cash and disappointing them) they'd get a few more tie-ins with carriers, so they did it. What bugs me is that lots of people here work for Google and like to think of themselves as hackers fighting the good fight at the "do no evil" company. No, hackers don't ship devices with basic networking features crippled whilst pretending it's a restriction free device.
I can't wait to wipe Android off my Nexus 7 once there is a robust Ubuntu release for it, and my next phone almost certainly won't be Android.
>Nexus 7 3G bought outright entirely separately to any plan or network carrier. Tethering is entirely disabled and many forums confirm this.
That's pretty obnoxious. I can't believe I can't find any info about this except small little anecdotal cases. I'm surprised it wasn't worthy of more hubbub or maybe I missed it.
>So while Canonical might try to put Amazon integration into the Unity bar, they know that you have to be able to turn it off or they will lose their users.
That's not really how that went down when the Amazon integration was first rolled out. See: 12.10.
"crippled operating system" is far from reality. It is proper Linux on x86 with GUI layer. It is very easy to install proper desktop environment (such as KDE or Gnome) and use it as normal laptop. Intellij Idea runs just fine on Chromebook. Only problem is small disk space (16GB).
I switched to a (non-developer-mode) Chromebook recently for work. It's a great development machine for what I use it for. My main workstation basically runs Chrome, Emacs, and some xterms. On my Pixel, I can just use Secure Shell to ssh to my tmux session and be working on exactly what I was using on my desktop. (Port forwarding works too, if you're developing a web app or something.) It's like being at my desktop except the keyboard and ergonomics aren't as good.
If I need to edit a screencast or image, two things I've never done for work ever in my life, I can just use Chrome Remote Desktop to log into my workstation. (I have a friend who logs in to his Windows machine at home using Chrome Remote Desktop and plays Final Fantasy. It's that usable!)
For what it's worth, I never really used a laptop until I got my Chromebook Pixel, because it was so painful to keep it up to date and my configuration sync'd. My Thinkpad X220 has been sitting dead on my windowsill for about a year. With ChromeOS, I don't have to deal with that anymore; I can just open up my computer and use it. And it's that usability that makes it worthwhile to me. (I also love the touchscreen and high resolution display!)
I'm also pretty excited about the flexibility of the Chrome APIs for writing packaged apps. One thing that made me apprehensive about switching from a Linux laptop to a Chromebook was that I wouldn't be able to use all the features of my portable HF SDR ham radio (an Elecraft KX3) while traveling with only my laptop. But, fixing this is just a simple matter of programming -- you can write a Chrome app that controls a USB device, and you can read incoming audio. (Meaning that you can tune the radio and read the I/Q signal via the soundcard. The only snag is that the Chromebook Pixel has only one channel of input, and you need two to reassemble the nearby radio signals. But a USB dongle can fix that problem.) Anyway, I'm looking forward to the era where complex cross-platform software is just a click away, and right now the tools exist. It's time to start using them!
I've recently done the same thing, although coming from the perspective of "you can have my MacBook Air when you pry it from my cold dead hands". It turns out that when all of your development has to happen on your Linux desktop anyway, which laptop you use matters a whole lot less.
For people who live remotely, Chrome OS is perfectly serviceable. I think you have to already be in that remote mindset for it to be a comfortable switch, though.
The objections I usually see (including those in this thread) relate to what the laptop can't do locally, and a lot of those objections are perfectly legitimate. There's a lot these little boxes can't do easily with the tools available today (which again, isn't to say these things aren't possible, just that they're not there yet), and for people who need those things making such a switch isn't going to be possible.
The only upside you seem to have there is the hardware itself, and that updating whichever OS (you don't specify) was harder before.
It's not like I don't have ssh here on my Ubuntu machine (similar model Thinkpad to yours), I don't see why you are trying to sell that as an upside. Indeed I have iPython in shell mode and a local copy of vim customized to my needs, and I have that as well as a server I can connect to at any time with all my sessions. Sometimes I might want to do an experiment locally rather than on a server though.
I can not only edit video (is anyone going to upload HD over the network to edit it on YouTube's editor?) , I can edit images, use my Wacom tablet, program things locally, I can record audio into Audacity and edit and change it. I can run LaTeX and actually work on academic documents. I can apt-get programs to resize many images, encode music or do just about anything. I can use R or python to generate graphs and save them locally rather than copy them from a server save or some crazy cloud save. On smaller data problems I can have a spreadsheet open for GUI editing in Libre Office and be saving to csv for a program to ingest after quick edits. Peripherals work without having to program an entirely new driver. It's a full desktop and it's fully featured, you can use it in a cloud-oriented way if you so choose as well so there doesn't seem to be any advantage to the Chromebooks other than this supposedly easier updating and nice sounding hardware.
The problem here is people are trying to sell an unfinished consumer OS as being good for developers or power users who already have powerfully polished desktop operating systems that are consumer oriented AND developer oriented as soon as you lift up the hood. In comparison the Chromebook simply doesn't stack up. The article was trying to push boot time as a feature for example, it just leads me to believe he hasn't installed Ubuntu in two years (or more actually).
I'm a power user so I need to work on images, video and audio, I need to be able to generate academic papers. I need to have OpenCV running locally on webcam feeds for testing things. I need advanced networking features from command line tools on localhost. It's all fine and dandy for them to come up with cut down device like a tablet with a keyboard, but after my experience of them turning off tethering on a Nexus device I am just not going to jump on board with anything until it's actually got more features and those features are actually not going to disappear at the whim of some advertising dollar driven decision. I don't think they'll ever be able to guarantee that properly. That OS sounds like it's years away from being remotely usable for a power user who's across a number of domains.
That is a damn nice radio. Unfortunately it'd be well over $1000AUD once I got it here - is there another product you know of that's a step above the Realtek TV card hack? I'm starting to get beyond its' capabilities (decoding P25 broadcasts)
>I never really used a laptop until I got my Chromebook Pixel, because it was so painful to keep it up to date and my configuration sync'd. My Thinkpad X220 has been sitting dead on my windowsill for about a year.
Have you tried Dropbox as a way to keep your config sync'd?
I have a chroot'ed Samsung Intel Chromebook that makes an OK development machine for small projects using Eclipse/Java/H2/Jetty. If I fully rooted it the extra ram would make the machine a bit more useful.
I'd be curious to hear more about installing chrooted Debian/Ubuntu to provide a full GNU userland locally. I'm still not quite sure what this would look like, or what the limitations might be.
Crouton is awesome—you get a chrooted Ubuntu accessible via crosh. You have CLI access with `sudo enter-chroot` and can launch XFCE4 with `sudo startxfce4`.
I never use XFCE, but if you do, you can seamlessly toggle between ChromeOS and XFCE with a keyboard shortcut (e.g. a YouTube video playing in ChromeOS remains playing if you switch to XFCE).
Crouton is actually a breeze to use. While the crouton script itself might have a few hacks under-the-hood, the end result is quite slick. Everything just installs under `/usr/local/chroots'. Removing one of your potentially many chrooted installs is just an `rm -rf'.
I prefer keeping ChromeOS primary and just opening a crosh window to expose one of these chroots (a browser and terminal is similar to my work environment on a Mac). Granted, XFCE can act weird if you choose to launch it, but
I've never needed that functionality.
If you do want to completely replace ChromeOS, there's Chrubuntu.
Crouton is interesting and I can see why people would like it. It's just I couldn't invest long term in something that requires effort on Googles part to support as they could drop support at any point.
Haven't heard of Chrubuntu I'll definitely check that out thanks!
Note I was using it for disconnected development on the road, not as a fancy ssh client as in the article.
The upshot is that it's not too bad as a development machine. But you definitely want to root it and put something other than ChromeOS on it. Fedora, Ubuntu and other regular Linux distros are available.
With Nitrous.io (previously action.io) https://www.nitrous.io/#aio any device with a large enough screen and a modern web browser makes an excellent dev machine. Been using it for the past several weeks. For web apps, it's the future. Basically no configuration and you get a linux environment that is similar to most production environments.
I just don't understand this attempts to use shitty and cheap piece of hardware to do development. You are not coding for food, right? Why bother yourself trying to use something that will make you so counterproductive?
Need powerful something - get desktop.
Need something slim and sexy - get f* macbookair
Need both - get pro
Need internet connection on the go - get nexus if you use tablet.
Oh don't need it -use tetering on your phone.
It is expensive - get Clear device
Yes, it will need more money than shitty chromebook, but you are making money with it, so it's worth _investing_ in your everyday companion a little.
What boggles my mind is that articles where people code X that does Y where Y is completely "useless" to 90%+ of the population get all the touchy feelies from HN, but when it comes to something laptop/netbook/desktop/cheap workstation related, it turns into a slamfest like this and the current top comment. Why is that?
What are /you/ missing? You're missing that he got a piece of hardware that's relatively closed down and made it useful him. Yes, none of that revolves around you, so tough luck. The end.
First thing you might be missing: there are probably a pile of folks on hacker news who don't have money. Students. People who have invested their life savings in their startup. People who work part time and see the world in the rest of their time. People who are spending their money on making sure their mum gets treatment for cancer. For these folks, getting the most out of the kit they can afford is important. And yes, thats a condescending statement aimed at you, but its not more condescending than "why don't you drop a couple grand on this problem?"
Second thing you might be missing: computers have marched forward in spec, yet most of us don't need tons of power in any dimension of the spec. My cheap chromebook ($200 or so) has 2G of ram. I went though uni with about of order of magnitude less ram, and was happy. The 16G ssd it ships with is sufficient for anything that isn't movies, music or photos. The ssd probably has more iops than 2005 era hard drives :). So the chromebook is low powered compared to the desktops of today, but its pretty powerful compared, to, for example, the computers google or facebook used to get off the ground.
Third thing: cloud compute. If I find myself needing thousands of hours of cpu time, I can get that on EC2 or similar. And its cheaper for everyone to rent cpu time when needed on a server in a well cooled warehouse somewhere where power is cheap, rather than have idle cpus connected up to city power grids.
I own a cheap chromebook (and I'm amused by you saying cheap in a negative way :)), and its fine for what it is. Its slim. Its not as sexy* as your mother, but hey. It has a debian chroot with all the normal tools on it. I don't worry about it being damaged or lost as much as I would if it was 5x as expensive. If I spent the money on a macbook air, I'd be buying a machine to run chrome and a terminal window, and all I'd be getting for my extra 800 dollars would be a nicer screen and track pad.
* I do wonder about people who describe computers as sexy.
My use-case is as a supplement to a heavier machine for travel. I love my 15" macbook pro, but I got tired of lugging it around Nepal, and I was always worried about it getting stolen or damaged.
I'd love to split my two computing needs:
- 1 machine that's heavy and does everything. Maybe a desktop; maybe a 17" laptop that I only move between work and home.
- 1 machine that's light, disposable, and does 90% of what I need to do. It fits in a traveller's backpack and I'm not heartbroken if it gets destroyed.
Right now I try to meet those needs somewhere in the middle with a medium-weight macbook pro, but it's definitely a compromise. I'd love to have both worlds.
I need my balls not to be cooked by the power-hungry processors.
I need a light shit because I walk with my backpack a lot.
I need the key layout on the keyboard not a pain in the ass.
I need my palm to be like little Fonzie. What Fonzie like? It's cool.
I need standard linux, because I don't care enough to learn about all the quirks of Apple.
I need to have a thing that is light, 3G-capable, has good key layout, cool, and I forget to mention, I'm cheap too. So ask me why do I need to spend 5 times as much for your Macbook again?
Last time I tried installing Linux (/Ubuntu) on a Macbook it was a balls cooking experience with the combination of NVidia and Intel. Pure intel HD might be better, but why do I want to solve those problems in the first place?
I'm surprised the ARM Chromebook shipped without any mechanism for indicating which apps in the Chrome Web Store are compatible with it (maybe they expected PNaCl to be completed?). Moreover, I had no idea what NaCl was until Secure Shell stalled and I tracked down the bug on a mailing list.
There's an enable "Portable Native Client" (PNaCl) in about:flags (dev. branch, at least), but I have little idea if this would fix the problem. This kind of troubleshooting is OK for power users, but seems at odds with the type of users ChromeOS wants to attract. Still love this machine, though.
I'm so tempted to get one of these. With the shell plugin, I have access to my very high-powered servers, and Chrome comes with a nice development environment. Besides that, it's cheap and light -- a perfect roadkit.
The only problem I see is the keyboard. I hate typing on netbook keyboards. I don't even like the keyboard on the Macbook Air.
>> Right out of the box, things work quite well. The Secure Shell browser extension can give you an xterm-compliant terminal directly in a browser tab.
>> Be sure to install the Crosh Window browser extension. It allows you to pull the browser-tab terminal out into its own window. Without it, many important key bindings will be swallowed by the browser.
Or just buy a new laptop, delete Windows and install Ubuntu and have a real machine with real software, not browser based similarities.
Can you (or any of the others making this same argument) explain to the rest of us why one bunch of bits running in environment a is 'real' and another bunch running in environment b is 'fake' (or 'unreal', or 'toy', or whatever disparaging term you care to use)? Last time I looked, JavaScript IS turing-complete.
I can't speak for others, when I was a kid, computers were powerful machines locked away and operated by seemingly mythical people. When I started reading about them I realized quickly there's nothing mythical, magical or mysterious about them at all. Then I wondered why isn't this power available to anyone, to everyone? It dawned on me in a flash, power and control.
I keep the cloud at an arm's distance, those computing resources are not owned or controlled by me. The cloud, given full control like a ChromeBook, takes all of the control away from me.
I say this on every Chromebook thread but I'll say it again because I see a lot of the same negativity as usual: the Samsung ARM Chromebook is f*cking awesome.
It's $250 so there's no argument about buying X or Y netbook instead, you can barely get anything with a keyboard that browses the internet for that price. Also for that price you get 2 (3?) years of 100GB on Google Drive and 12 Gogo WiFi passes, which together are already worth over $250. So you can throw the device in the trash and still come out on top. Now to the computer itself:
First, the battery life is awesome, 6.5 hours of solid use (WiFi model) and since it turns on from cold in ~7 seconds you can turn it off between sessions and not lose any power at all. If that's too long for you just close the lid, you'll lose about 1% per hour but everything resumes instantly when you open it (and I do mean INSTANTLY).
Second, the hardware is really excellent for the price. The keyboard is my favorite laptop keyboard out there (even against my MBP) and the trackpad is second only to Apple devices imo. It's the same weight/size as a MacBook Air but maybe 0.2" thicker. The only hardware downsides are the plastic chassis and the screen's somewhat bad viewing angles.
Third, it runs most of what you need right out of the box. I don't even have my in developer mode, you don't need that to use Google's Secure Shell and Remote Desktop Chrome extensions. It has an Offline version of Google Drive so you can keep your most important documents local and everything syncs when you're connected.
Fourth, it's stress-free. Because everything is synchronized to the cloud and the hardware is so cheap, you never have to worry about this thing. If it breaks (which it won't easily), just go to your nearest Best Buy, drop $250, and sign in with you Google account and you'll be back exactly where you left off (even down to the tabs you had open).
I really can't recommend this device more highly. It's definitely not the right device for full-time development but as a companion to a larger laptop or a desktop it's a perfect second machine and much more useful than an iPad or Transformer-style tablet (I've had both).
Chromebook Pixel is $1,300. For that amount of money you can get a really really nice laptop. It won't have a super-high-res screen, but it will have a proper high-end i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 500GB SSD, video card enough to play modern games, etc.
I don't know about you, but performance matters for me. I don't want to wait twice as long for a DB to import, or a SQL query to run.
It's actually included on the ARM Chromebook now, I was able to launch it in Best Buy after search for the instructions on my phone (it's Ctrl-Alt-T).
The author is referring to launching normal ssh instead of the version included in cros shell which has a weird runtime configuration menu (much like ftp) and some limitations.
You do need dev mode to start bash even as a non-privileged user unfortunately.
83 comments
[ 6.8 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadI personaly snapped up a nice Asus netbook with built in 3g modem, wifi and bluetooth and cuts a lovely battery life.
But a nice cheap chromebook is probably the best option for most unless you can find a cheap netbook of comparable use.
Though ironicly none have beat my old psion 5mx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5) for battery life and that can do ssh as well, sadly though IRDA and serial are not the cutting edge comm's standards. Have been a few that come close, but just not jumped out at me.
That said I'm still awaiting for something of that form factor with some modern love.
That all said if Mr Linux Linus is happy with a chromebook as a dev machince, then they must be doing something right, though a Chrome pixel just for SSH would be fiscal perversion on my budget.
Agreed, and if you put Ubuntu on it (or the Chromebook), doesn't this all become much easier with its remote login from the login page feature? Not sure if any other distros have that too, but regardless, surely it'd be much easier?
>though a Chrome pixel just for SSH would be fiscal perversion on my budget.
According to the article a MacBook Air used to fill this role, totally agree that both are crazy expensive for that.
The more that I tinker with OpenStack and generally setting up virtualized services I am beginning to be sway towards never necessarily needing to buy a desktop machine again.
Up until a few months ago my machines sat around just to collect dust. But I see a future where a Chromebook style machine can easily connect to a VPN with an OpenStack cloud powering development. Its actually quite damn easy now if you invest the time.
The only reason I do not do this now is that I have been unable to find a machine with decent enough resolution and great battery life. But I've told myself that my next laptop (right now a 15 inch MacBook Pro) will be something significantly smaller.
I just hope that the retina displays catch up with the rest of the industry.
You aren't getting Retina/Pixel resolution with the cheap Chromebook, but my Series 5 is 1280 x 800, which is the same resolution as the 13" Macbook Pro's (pre-retina) were. This is quite decent considering the average 15.6" cheapo laptop runs 1366 x 768.
It's already bad enough that Google maims some of the Nexus line by disabling tethering. Android is also inflexible in many ways regarding having a local easy to use file system etc. I personally can't wait to get off Android and onto Ubuntu mobile or Firefox OS.
And I can run a real operating system on that hardware with no problems. My laptop boots in less than 10 seconds and I trust Ubuntu just as much as a Chromebook for security. If you are worried about the security of local files you can encrypt your drive, very simply in the last few versions of Ubuntu but I don't bother, if needs be.
None of the points you make in favour of the Chromebook are exclusive to it, what's exclusive to it though is you can't get access to the vast flexibility of a local system and have to go through NX.
That's all fine for people who only do back-end stuff, or Google if they want their employees to "dog food" living in the cloud, but for someone who wants to be able to do normal everyday things like edit images, test locally or any of the many other advantages of a flexible system it doesn't really cut it. If there were locally running JavaScript equivalents for image editing and everything else we'd be a bit closer to feature parity but I still wouldn't see the major attraction.
Adding to that working with remote GUI apps simply sucks compared to running them locally, for all kinds of reasons. It's less responsive, applications don't always integrate well with the rest of the OS (think keyboard/language settings, terminal capabilities, reliable copy/paste), you lose things like local search, some applications you rarely use will not be available on the remote, and if your network connection goes down you lose your session. And who's going to set up and maintain the NX service? If having your work in the cloud matters a lot, I would much rather just mount some remote filesystem for storing it, and run all my dev tools locally.
I tend to agree I don't see the point here, since when is a cheap machine to SSH to some other box anything special, let alone a viable replacement for a dev system? I did stuff like this (SSH-ing to a remote host, editing webpages there, viewing the result locally) literally 10 years ago on a Pentium-233 laptop you couldn't even give away for free today because no-one would want to have it. For $250 there's a lot of decent notebooks that would do everything a Chromebook does, and adequately run a modern linux distro to boot.
But you know, just now considering the restrictions that Apple, Google and Microsoft put on their mobile machines, because they can, creates a real opportunity for Firefox OS (and yes ubuntu). Though niche, as most consumers won't care... unless the restrictions go too far.
Toshiba - Satellite 15.6" Laptop - 4GB Memory - 320GB Hard Drive - Satin Black Model: C855D/S5103 • SKU: 8119044 62 Ratings $279.99
That's 2x the ram and I get 320 HD which even if you don't want to use it for storage it's pretty awesome when running any OS that supports virtual memory. Have you looked at how much virtual memory your average Linux distro ends up using?
That was just the first hit. There's plenty of machines in the same price range as a chromebook that have better specs, more power and therefore more freedom.
That's not a laptop that's a luggable
Only 1 year ago before the Retina MBP every MBP being carried by the majority of geeks around Silicon Valley weighed 5.6lbs yet that did not stopped them from carrying them as laptops
For most developers' usage, you'd be better off with a 32gb SSD than with the 320gb slow-as-hell spinner drive.
Not to mention a cheap 15.6" laptop gets terrible battery life. My $250 Chromebook gets 6.5-7hours, even when running Ubuntu via crouton.
With crouton you still get the large developer mode warning right?
and it requires either a keystroke or a 30 second to pass correct?
and do you have the arm one or another?
I have the original Series 5 which has a dual core Atom.
As for battery life I'd personally rather have a machine I can get real work done with shitty battery life than one with great battery life on which I can't get real work done. There's a huge list of things I can do on the machine with an HD, virtual memory, and a real OS that I can't do on the Chromebook. In fact Chrome will even run better on the machine with the HD as it won't kill off tabs when it gets low on memory. It also won't get low on memory as quick as it has twice the memory.
If price/value is the main concern a used 4-5 year old x86 laptop is a way better deal. I have an old HP nc8430 for this purpose. Sells on eBay for about $100-$150 these days. Blows away a low end ARM ChromeBook on performance, price and flexibility.
The file storage is the one that made me leery. I solved the issue by using owncloud, which so far seems to be working pretty well. The performance could be better but I'm pretty sure that's due to my slow upload connection.
I don't get your last point though. Chrome OS has a pretty rapid pace of development and is getting new features every day. They also have tech support for those who need it.
That was more so a Verizon issue that Google's choice. Also remember that Verizon had disabled Google Wallet on that model in favor of the still not launched ISIS.
It's a moot point now because the Nexus 4 is GSM-only.
And while I theoretically could I am not going to install a "cracked" version of Android from a l33td00d7 user on a php forum just to get a fundamentally basic and useful networking feature which is present in other installs of Android and which there was no reason to turn off. The whole point of buying a Nexus device was to get away from the crap modifications (like the constant nagging, with a loud beep, to update the "Facebook integration" stuff from my phone's manufacturer which can't be turned off) and lack of basic updates on non-pure Android devices. I wanted a pure Android experience, one of my strong desires was to use it for tethering, Google promised a pure experience and it was a deception (can't remember if it was actually stated somewhere in the fine print, but I certainly read loads about the specifications before purchase and didn't see any mention of it).
It's a disgrace and, along with a series of other pointless Apple-like restrictions worming their way into Android, it confirms Google is fully prepared to cripple things in the name of profits. And it's not even their own profits in this case, it was likely done at the behest of carriers and hugely damages what Nexus was supposed to be about and their brand, so it's even crazier.
So while Canonical might try to put Amazon integration into the Unity bar, they know that you have to be able to turn it off or they will lose their users. The people at Google on the other hand know they can get away with it, although they might lose a few power users (post hoc, after taking their cash and disappointing them) they'd get a few more tie-ins with carriers, so they did it. What bugs me is that lots of people here work for Google and like to think of themselves as hackers fighting the good fight at the "do no evil" company. No, hackers don't ship devices with basic networking features crippled whilst pretending it's a restriction free device.
I can't wait to wipe Android off my Nexus 7 once there is a robust Ubuntu release for it, and my next phone almost certainly won't be Android.
That's pretty obnoxious. I can't believe I can't find any info about this except small little anecdotal cases. I'm surprised it wasn't worthy of more hubbub or maybe I missed it.
>So while Canonical might try to put Amazon integration into the Unity bar, they know that you have to be able to turn it off or they will lose their users.
That's not really how that went down when the Amazon integration was first rolled out. See: 12.10.
If I need to edit a screencast or image, two things I've never done for work ever in my life, I can just use Chrome Remote Desktop to log into my workstation. (I have a friend who logs in to his Windows machine at home using Chrome Remote Desktop and plays Final Fantasy. It's that usable!)
For what it's worth, I never really used a laptop until I got my Chromebook Pixel, because it was so painful to keep it up to date and my configuration sync'd. My Thinkpad X220 has been sitting dead on my windowsill for about a year. With ChromeOS, I don't have to deal with that anymore; I can just open up my computer and use it. And it's that usability that makes it worthwhile to me. (I also love the touchscreen and high resolution display!)
I'm also pretty excited about the flexibility of the Chrome APIs for writing packaged apps. One thing that made me apprehensive about switching from a Linux laptop to a Chromebook was that I wouldn't be able to use all the features of my portable HF SDR ham radio (an Elecraft KX3) while traveling with only my laptop. But, fixing this is just a simple matter of programming -- you can write a Chrome app that controls a USB device, and you can read incoming audio. (Meaning that you can tune the radio and read the I/Q signal via the soundcard. The only snag is that the Chromebook Pixel has only one channel of input, and you need two to reassemble the nearby radio signals. But a USB dongle can fix that problem.) Anyway, I'm looking forward to the era where complex cross-platform software is just a click away, and right now the tools exist. It's time to start using them!
For people who live remotely, Chrome OS is perfectly serviceable. I think you have to already be in that remote mindset for it to be a comfortable switch, though.
The objections I usually see (including those in this thread) relate to what the laptop can't do locally, and a lot of those objections are perfectly legitimate. There's a lot these little boxes can't do easily with the tools available today (which again, isn't to say these things aren't possible, just that they're not there yet), and for people who need those things making such a switch isn't going to be possible.
It's not like I don't have ssh here on my Ubuntu machine (similar model Thinkpad to yours), I don't see why you are trying to sell that as an upside. Indeed I have iPython in shell mode and a local copy of vim customized to my needs, and I have that as well as a server I can connect to at any time with all my sessions. Sometimes I might want to do an experiment locally rather than on a server though.
I can not only edit video (is anyone going to upload HD over the network to edit it on YouTube's editor?) , I can edit images, use my Wacom tablet, program things locally, I can record audio into Audacity and edit and change it. I can run LaTeX and actually work on academic documents. I can apt-get programs to resize many images, encode music or do just about anything. I can use R or python to generate graphs and save them locally rather than copy them from a server save or some crazy cloud save. On smaller data problems I can have a spreadsheet open for GUI editing in Libre Office and be saving to csv for a program to ingest after quick edits. Peripherals work without having to program an entirely new driver. It's a full desktop and it's fully featured, you can use it in a cloud-oriented way if you so choose as well so there doesn't seem to be any advantage to the Chromebooks other than this supposedly easier updating and nice sounding hardware.
The problem here is people are trying to sell an unfinished consumer OS as being good for developers or power users who already have powerfully polished desktop operating systems that are consumer oriented AND developer oriented as soon as you lift up the hood. In comparison the Chromebook simply doesn't stack up. The article was trying to push boot time as a feature for example, it just leads me to believe he hasn't installed Ubuntu in two years (or more actually).
I'm a power user so I need to work on images, video and audio, I need to be able to generate academic papers. I need to have OpenCV running locally on webcam feeds for testing things. I need advanced networking features from command line tools on localhost. It's all fine and dandy for them to come up with cut down device like a tablet with a keyboard, but after my experience of them turning off tethering on a Nexus device I am just not going to jump on board with anything until it's actually got more features and those features are actually not going to disappear at the whim of some advertising dollar driven decision. I don't think they'll ever be able to guarantee that properly. That OS sounds like it's years away from being remotely usable for a power user who's across a number of domains.
Have you tried Dropbox as a way to keep your config sync'd?
https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/wiki/
I never use XFCE, but if you do, you can seamlessly toggle between ChromeOS and XFCE with a keyboard shortcut (e.g. a YouTube video playing in ChromeOS remains playing if you switch to XFCE).
Seems a bit of a hacky mess if not TBH
I prefer keeping ChromeOS primary and just opening a crosh window to expose one of these chroots (a browser and terminal is similar to my work environment on a Mac). Granted, XFCE can act weird if you choose to launch it, but I've never needed that functionality.
If you do want to completely replace ChromeOS, there's Chrubuntu.
Haven't heard of Chrubuntu I'll definitely check that out thanks!
https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/some-thoughts-after-2-...
Note I was using it for disconnected development on the road, not as a fancy ssh client as in the article.
The upshot is that it's not too bad as a development machine. But you definitely want to root it and put something other than ChromeOS on it. Fedora, Ubuntu and other regular Linux distros are available.
Need powerful something - get desktop.
Need something slim and sexy - get f* macbookair
Need both - get pro
Need internet connection on the go - get nexus if you use tablet.
Oh don't need it -use tetering on your phone.
It is expensive - get Clear device
Yes, it will need more money than shitty chromebook, but you are making money with it, so it's worth _investing_ in your everyday companion a little.
What I'm missing?
What are /you/ missing? You're missing that he got a piece of hardware that's relatively closed down and made it useful him. Yes, none of that revolves around you, so tough luck. The end.
Second thing you might be missing: computers have marched forward in spec, yet most of us don't need tons of power in any dimension of the spec. My cheap chromebook ($200 or so) has 2G of ram. I went though uni with about of order of magnitude less ram, and was happy. The 16G ssd it ships with is sufficient for anything that isn't movies, music or photos. The ssd probably has more iops than 2005 era hard drives :). So the chromebook is low powered compared to the desktops of today, but its pretty powerful compared, to, for example, the computers google or facebook used to get off the ground.
Third thing: cloud compute. If I find myself needing thousands of hours of cpu time, I can get that on EC2 or similar. And its cheaper for everyone to rent cpu time when needed on a server in a well cooled warehouse somewhere where power is cheap, rather than have idle cpus connected up to city power grids.
I own a cheap chromebook (and I'm amused by you saying cheap in a negative way :)), and its fine for what it is. Its slim. Its not as sexy* as your mother, but hey. It has a debian chroot with all the normal tools on it. I don't worry about it being damaged or lost as much as I would if it was 5x as expensive. If I spent the money on a macbook air, I'd be buying a machine to run chrome and a terminal window, and all I'd be getting for my extra 800 dollars would be a nicer screen and track pad.
* I do wonder about people who describe computers as sexy.
I'd love to split my two computing needs: - 1 machine that's heavy and does everything. Maybe a desktop; maybe a 17" laptop that I only move between work and home. - 1 machine that's light, disposable, and does 90% of what I need to do. It fits in a traveller's backpack and I'm not heartbroken if it gets destroyed.
Right now I try to meet those needs somewhere in the middle with a medium-weight macbook pro, but it's definitely a compromise. I'd love to have both worlds.
I need a light shit because I walk with my backpack a lot.
I need the key layout on the keyboard not a pain in the ass.
I need my palm to be like little Fonzie. What Fonzie like? It's cool.
I need standard linux, because I don't care enough to learn about all the quirks of Apple.
I need to have a thing that is light, 3G-capable, has good key layout, cool, and I forget to mention, I'm cheap too. So ask me why do I need to spend 5 times as much for your Macbook again?
Seen as it's an actual computer and all not a locked down Google product that needs to be rooted to install an OS in the first place.
There's an enable "Portable Native Client" (PNaCl) in about:flags (dev. branch, at least), but I have little idea if this would fix the problem. This kind of troubleshooting is OK for power users, but seems at odds with the type of users ChromeOS wants to attract. Still love this machine, though.
The only problem I see is the keyboard. I hate typing on netbook keyboards. I don't even like the keyboard on the Macbook Air.
Maybe I'd get used to it after awhile?
Or just buy a new laptop, delete Windows and install Ubuntu and have a real machine with real software, not browser based similarities.
edits: fixing my brain's desire to misspell buy.
I keep the cloud at an arm's distance, those computing resources are not owned or controlled by me. The cloud, given full control like a ChromeBook, takes all of the control away from me.
It's $250 so there's no argument about buying X or Y netbook instead, you can barely get anything with a keyboard that browses the internet for that price. Also for that price you get 2 (3?) years of 100GB on Google Drive and 12 Gogo WiFi passes, which together are already worth over $250. So you can throw the device in the trash and still come out on top. Now to the computer itself:
First, the battery life is awesome, 6.5 hours of solid use (WiFi model) and since it turns on from cold in ~7 seconds you can turn it off between sessions and not lose any power at all. If that's too long for you just close the lid, you'll lose about 1% per hour but everything resumes instantly when you open it (and I do mean INSTANTLY).
Second, the hardware is really excellent for the price. The keyboard is my favorite laptop keyboard out there (even against my MBP) and the trackpad is second only to Apple devices imo. It's the same weight/size as a MacBook Air but maybe 0.2" thicker. The only hardware downsides are the plastic chassis and the screen's somewhat bad viewing angles.
Third, it runs most of what you need right out of the box. I don't even have my in developer mode, you don't need that to use Google's Secure Shell and Remote Desktop Chrome extensions. It has an Offline version of Google Drive so you can keep your most important documents local and everything syncs when you're connected.
Fourth, it's stress-free. Because everything is synchronized to the cloud and the hardware is so cheap, you never have to worry about this thing. If it breaks (which it won't easily), just go to your nearest Best Buy, drop $250, and sign in with you Google account and you'll be back exactly where you left off (even down to the tabs you had open).
I really can't recommend this device more highly. It's definitely not the right device for full-time development but as a companion to a larger laptop or a desktop it's a perfect second machine and much more useful than an iPad or Transformer-style tablet (I've had both).
I don't know about you, but performance matters for me. I don't want to wait twice as long for a DB to import, or a SQL query to run.
The author is referring to launching normal ssh instead of the version included in cros shell which has a weird runtime configuration menu (much like ftp) and some limitations.
You do need dev mode to start bash even as a non-privileged user unfortunately.
Is a massive exaggeration