What are the odds of programs like SublimeText being able to run on ARM in the near future? I'm sure Eclipse would be far too heavy.
Most of the 'Chromebook as a developer laptop' make it into a fancy SSH terminal - which is fine. But I don't really see a 'terminal' as a 'developer laptop'. I understand you can still access the internals of Linux along with the shell and other languages, but it doesn't work for a lot of people when you can't use the same apps/devices as you can on a your 'normal' machine.
A $999 XPS 13 or MacBook Air looks pretty inviting, even at 3X the price of a $299 Chromebook when you realize how much productivity gain there is when you don't have to dink around with the OS and aren't limited in your app selection.
With crouton, there are very few Linux apps that you can't run on a Chromebook. While I haven't tried it with SublimeText, I have run Eclipse on my Chromebook. It's not the smoothest experience, but it can get the job done.
So far, Arduino and IntelliJ are the only apps that I haven't gotten working on my Chromebook. The former relies on some x86 libraries that obviously won't work on an ARM processor, and the latter prefers the Oracle JVM which is just too much of a pain for me to set up when OpenJDK and Eclipse work well enough. I've also had some issues with my VPN (IPSec Xauth PSK).
I probably wouldn't recommend a Chromebook as a full time development machine, but it can certainly be done better than just a fancy SSH terminal. It's served me well enough when I've needed to work on the road. It's the best traveling laptop I've ever owned.
Android Studio, who is based on IntelliJ, didn't like the fact that I was running OpenJDK on my notebook but it worked. You should probably check on IntelliJ again.
I recommend nuking ChromeOS entirely and installing your distro of choice (don't bother with crouton or whatever). Then you use it like you normally would.
The main attraction with Chromebooks is the hardware, not ChromeOS.
I've been using a Chromebook as a development laptop for a few months after leaving my real laptop on a train (it was possibly the stupidest thing I've done due to caffeine withdrawal).
Yes, it can function as an SSH Client, but its up there with the worst SSH clients you've encountered. Its slow, and its ugly. You'll also have problems when it comes to more advanced things.
Like copying a CSV you generated with a script on the real computer you're SSHed into so that you can email it to someone.
I did briefly run a full Ubuntu install in a chroot, which made things a little nicer, but I swapped one set of problems for a whole new set, such as multiple displays not working.
Having said all that, if you're not a developer Chromebooks are lovely things.
Does that terminal emulator handle all control sequences that xterm would allow? When I tried ChromeOS, whatever terminal emulator I was using was largely worthless for me because Chrome was intercepting certain control sequences and not allowing the terminal emulator to get them.
It's not quite as capable as the original, but I've put together a Sublime-like editor running as a Chrome app, because I thought it was ridiculous to have to run Vim in a chroot just to do some editing. I'd love to get feedback from any developers working on Chrome OS: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/caret/fljalecfjcio...
Most of the 'Chromebook as a developer laptop' make it into a fancy SSH terminal - which is fine. But I don't really see a 'terminal' as a 'developer laptop'. I understand you can still access the internals of Linux along with the shell and other languages, but it doesn't work for a lot of people when you can't use the same apps/devices as you can on a your 'normal' machine.
A $999 XPS 13 or MacBook Air looks pretty inviting, even at 3X the price of a $299 Chromebook when you realize how much productivity gain there is when you don't have to dink around with the OS and aren't limited in your app selection.