
Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development? - cesidio
The question if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook has surfaced (unintended pun) many times here. Do you think that a Pixelbook (or any Chromebook) is finally ready for that? Google claims so:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.google&#x2F;products&#x2F;chromebooks&#x2F;linux-on-chromebooks&#x2F;
======
tannhaeuser
I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google.
You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks,
of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad,
though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu
preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en
vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

~~~
lettergram
I use my Arch Linux T450 Lenovo laptopand it's a beast. $500 on eBay + $180
for SSD + $150 for RAM.

My laptop has 20Gb of RAM, 2x 1Tb SSDs, and 10 hours battery life, with 1 hot
swap batteries pushing me to 18 hours battery life if I want it. Total cost:
~$900 with tax and shipping

IMO best track pad outside of Apple + best laptop keyboard

~~~
pahool
this looks like my dream machine. Two questions: how is the fan noise, and
where did you find 1tb ssd drives so cheap?

~~~
zrobotics
I'm also running a t450, albeit w/ only 16gb ram and a 500gb ssd. Fan noise is
not bad, certainly not loud enough to be distracting. I purchased mine refurb
through Amazon for the 6 month warranty, but didn't need to use it. Wifi works
great under Debian, but I could not get the Bluetooth card to work reliably. I
replaced it with a card designed for the t430, but it wasn't all that easy. I
would advise just using a USB Bluetooth adapter.

The only other complaint I have is that palm rejection for the track pad is
poor, I eventually disabled the track pad entirely. I prefer the track point
anyway, but I know a lot of people hate using them. Keyboard is excellent, IMO
better than a MacBook. I would be curious, perhaps the OP used 2 500gb SSDs,
you can get drive caddys to replace the DVD drive (I kept it, as I still need
to read disks relatively often).

~~~
pasbesoin
On my T430:

    
    
        synclient TouchpadOff=1
    

There's supposed to be a better alternative to the Synaptics stuff, now, so I
read a few months ago, but I forgot to note it and haven't actively searched
it out, yet.

------
cagenut
I've been using my Samsung Chromebook Plus for about a year now, and the
answer is a fairly clear: no.

Everything about it is just sluggish and laggy. The opposite of snappy. This
is compounded by the fact that the AWS and GCP web interfaces I spend a lot of
time in aren't exactly lightweight, but that's the work. The SSH client is
similarly just ever so slightly off.

In terms of just compatibility pains, don't even _think_ about trying to print
from the thing. Also, the copy/paste mechanics are probably not wrong per-se
but just odd enough that I'm constantly frustrated by getting it wrong.
Lastly, tons of basic stuff is just a hoop to jump through now, like setting
up an adblocker or using a basic text editor. I can't even imagine how hard a
full IDE would drag.

Bear in mind this is the "plus" (arm) not the "pro" (x86). So maybe a
Pixelbook with its full-i5 would get over the hurdle, but I guess my overall
takeaway would be if your'e going to try a Chromebook make it an $800 one not
a $450 one.

~~~
jasonvorhe
That's not a fault of Chromebooks themselves but the ARM CPU. Except for
Apple, no one can pull off desktop class ARM right now.

The Pixelbook and the Chromebook Pixels before that have excellent performance
for developers.

I'm sure a Chromebook Pro would have been a good choice for a workhorse as
well.

~~~
wilsonnb
I'd wait until they release a MacBook running on ARM to declare Apples chips
as desktop class.

------
crystaln
A few months ago my Macbook Pro screen cracked while I was on a road trip. I
thought I was screwed, but decided to try development on a Chromebook I had
lying around.

That was when I discovered AWS Cloud 9. After getting back my repaired fully
maxed out latest model Macbook Pro, I have not even bothered to restore the
hard drive. Developing on Cloud 9 has been wonderful. Having everything
already in the cloud in a production-like environment has enormous advantages.
Sure there are things I occasionally may miss or be unable to do on a
Chromebook, though this has surprisingly not been an issue yet. The only Mac
app I've wanted to use is Sketch.

I have since upgraded to a Pixelbook, which has a gorgeous screen and a
superior keyboard to a Macbook Pro. Touch screens with tablet mode make a
computer enormously more versatile, serving as a tablet and media platform. If
I lose or damage my Chromebook, I can continue development seemlessly on any
computer, and log in to any Chromebook to recover my environment. Not having a
$3000 laptop that I need to protect with my life, knowing that if I lose
everything nothing is lost, is very liberating.

I'm now transitioning off of iOS because of the lack of iMessage and the
general pointlessness of using an iPhone with a Chromebook. Perhaps the
biggest annoyance with iOS devices now is the disastrous Lightning connector,
which adds so much complication to my cable environment. With a Pixel 2, I
basically just need a few similar wall chargers and USB-C cables rather than a
tangle of converters and cables.

Surprising myself, I am now basically committed to a future on Chrome OS and
Google's ecosystem. My only regret is not supporting Apple's respect for
privacy, which is a substantial regret. I can only hope our Google and perhaps
government some day will adopt Apple's ethical standards around privacy.

Anyone want to buy a Macbook Pro? It really is a beautiful machine. I just
don't seem to need it anymore.

~~~
cdubzzz
> Having everything already in the cloud in a production-like environment has
> enormous advantages.

Could you talk about this a little more? I have never used C9. I use git and
an IDE on multiple devices (Linux on home desktop, Windows on old ass laptop,
macOS at work) so I can work in basically the same environment on any of those
devices any time. Granted, I can’t just pull up a browser on _any_ device, but
that seems like it would be a rare use case (for me, anyway).

Sounds like you don’t need that MacBook anymore, wanna sell it to me cheap? (:

~~~
crystaln
In reality those environments are not "the same". You have all sorts of
libraries that are compiled and set up specifically for your system, and those
differences add up.

With Cloud 9 everything is on an EC2 instance with Linux, exactly the same
platform as I will deploy in production.

~~~
cdubzzz
True. My environments are not the same. Most will call that a disadvantage. I
rather like knowing about environments on various platforms and how my
applications support them. Of course there are other, probably better, ways to
approach that (:

It sounds like C9 can be really useful for AWS deployment specifically, but
beyond that I don’t see much value over git+IDE.

~~~
crystaln
The value is that it is online on an ec2 instance on the Aws network , which
may or may not be something you want.

Also git+IDE is exactly what I use with Cloud 9. C9 is the IDE.

------
aerovistae
"if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook"?

What kind of premise is that for a question? You think this forum consists
only of devs using Macbooks?

~~~
dmihal
Windows is out of the question for a lot of devs that live in the Unix shell.
Sure, I could run a Linux VM or dual boot, but those aren't very pleasant
experience.

~~~
cpach
FYI, Windows 10 also has WSL [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/install-win10](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/install-win10)

~~~
O_H_E
Yeah, but it is insanely slow

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=wsl-
febr...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=wsl-
february-2018&num=1)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/7knl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/7knl03/is_wsl_very_slow_for_anyone_else/)

~~~
cpach
Strange. I’ve never noticed that.

~~~
ajross
It's fine for casual use and CPU- or network-bound tasks. But anything
involving lots of filesystem operations (like, heh, building software) is just
a mess. The project I'm working on right now is a biggish C tree using
cmake/ninja that still builds in 3-20 seconds (depending on configuration) on
my dual core laptop but takes 90+ on a quad core skylake under WSL.

But for the simple case of "I need to ssh around or pull some files with curl
or check something out from github or whatever and I don't have my linux box"
it works great.

------
ufmace
I'd give it a qualified yes. Actually, I don't think "Chromebooks" is the
right thing to ask about, that sounds like the physical hardware. That varies
widely and can mostly run Linux, but that's not particularly special. We
should ask if ChromeOS is ready for serious development.

There's definitely some types of development work that just won't ever be
practical in any way on a ChromeOS device. Developing iOS apps, Windows GUI
apps, etc. Sure you can remote into a MacOS or Windows machine, but I don't
think that counts. Anything requiring massive CPU power or RAM probably won't
work too well either.

There's also definitely plenty of ways of working productively that are very
practical. Being remoted into a cloud IDE or SSH works fine. Not sure if that
counts, but cloud work is the main idea of ChromeOS. You can install Linux
side by side with Crouton, but going outside of ChromeOS seems beside the
point. You can install something like Termux to get a pretty normal Linux
interface without breaking ChromeOS security, but it does seem to have a
couple of quirks.

I've been using the Termux method for a while for side projects, and I've
mostly been pleasantly surprised. Ruby, Python, C, Go, and Rust all run just
fine, as does Vim, Tmux, SSH, Git, etc. Even installing local DB servers for
web apps to test against seems to work fine. I have run into a couple of snags
with various Ruby gems that I haven't gotten around to sorting out yet. The
community around the setup is decent, but maybe not as big as you'd really
want for something you "seriously develop" on. You can certainly get most
types of development work done on it though.

------
chewz
I couldn't stand anymore the stream of mistakes that macOS had become so I had
installed ChromeOS as main OS on MacBook Pro.

This is excellent combination. Mac is still superior hardware wise and
ChromeOS is really nice graphical environment for web browsing, HBO Go,
Spotify, YouTube, Google Play Music, Google Photos, Google Drive, Inbox etc.
Anyway most of the time I spent inside terminal - crouton - Debian stretch -
Vim - gcloud.

I am enjoying the screen real estate of Mac's Retina display, touchpad,
keyboard, battery life etc. On the other hand I am free from half-baked Apple
software...

I have a backup ChromeOS install on at least 6 years old x230. I have also
wiped out Windows and installed ChromeOS on my Mom's i3 Lenovo laptop.

So far so good..

~~~
PascLeRasc
How'd you do this? Couldn't you just use Chrome on OS X as a ChromeOS of
sorts?

~~~
chewz
I had used Neverware build of ChromeOS[1] - no dual-boot anymore so I had to
make a choice.

Well, it had been a process - I had been growing dissapointed with lack of
quality of Apple software, each iteration beeing of lower quality and plain
dumber then competition (iCloud, Siri, Apple Music etc.) High Sierra had been
the final straw.

Over time I have stopped using iCloud, Apple Photos, Mail, Safari and replaced
them with Google Photos, Google Drive, mutt in Terminal, Chrome etc.

At some point I have realized that I have only single app comming from
AppStore on my computer. The rest is either free software (paid for but
dowloaded from the web not from Apple's walled garden) or from Homebrew.

At that stage jumping out of Apple's garden had been quite painless for me. I
am not missing iMessage even. And I have started using Sony XZ Premium instead
of iPhone at more or less the same time (better screen resolution, better
bluetooth music quality with Sony MDR-1RBT headphones and at quarter of the
price of iPhone 8).

Some time ago when still on macOS I have started using dnscrypt-proxy 2.0 on
my router which disables most of call home capabilities of Google, Apple,
Facebook etc. And also I have my own extension for Chrome which keeps my
Google Search and Youtube activity transparent to Google. Not industry-grade
but I am enjoying enough privacy on ChromeOS.

[1]:
[https://www.neverware.com/freedownload](https://www.neverware.com/freedownload)

------
cesidio
Support for Linux will enable you to create, test and run Android and web app
for phones, tablets and laptops all on one Chromebook. Run popular editors,
code in your favorite language and launch projects to Google Cloud with the
command-line. Everything works directly on a Chromebook.

Linux runs inside a virtual machine that was designed from scratch for
Chromebooks. That means it starts in seconds and integrates completely with
Chromebook features. Linux apps can start with a click of an icon, windows can
be moved around, and files can be opened directly from apps

------
magoon
I use a 12” MacBook and find it almost fully suitable for all development.
Even with VMs and Docker containers, it’s great, but if anything misbehaves
and gets it running too hot it can get sluggish. It’s unable to recover on its
own because it has no fan.

MacBook Pros can keep going even with CPU-abusive software. I don’t want to
carry the extra weight so I choose the trade-off.

But a Chromebook? I don’t understand the fascination with trying to develop on
a more challenging dev platform that offers seemingly no advantage in terms of
performance, mobility, price, or ergonomics.

~~~
yani
Escape key, siri button, densed keyboard keys, and unreasonably huge trackpad
are the things that made me switch. I am in a meeting or listen to a youtube
video... I press backspace ... Oh my bad I pressed siri button - everything
goes silent for 30 seconds.

I disabled siri button... a few weeks later apple released an update and siri
is back ... just before my important call. My anxienty level is to the roof.

~~~
bengale
If you don't use capslock you can set the keyboard to map that to escape.

~~~
PascLeRasc
I think that's the de facto control key on Macbooks since they aren't in the
bottom left corner. It'd be cool if we could configure a single caps lock
keypress to Esc and holding it down to Control.

~~~
brazzledazzle
I use mine for escape and hadn’t considered using it for control. Is it more
comfortable?

~~~
copperx
It's indispensable because OS X has Emacs bindings in all standard controls.
Control A, E, K, P, N, C, D.

These keybindings are one of the only reasons I have stayed with OS X. I'm
surprised that others use Cmd-arrow combinations instead.

------
rectang
It's a challenge to understand what information is leaking to Google when
using ChromeOS and its cloud-first, always-logged-in design. As developers, we
have a responsibility to our clients to keep their secrets.

Many clients may not care -- imagine how much sensitive business data Slack
has! But I'd want to make sure that my usage of ChromeOS was compatible with
the client's policies, compared with a laptop running one of the more
traditional self-contained operating systems.

~~~
eli
Are you talking about the threat of Google getting hacked? Because otherwise
ChromeOS seems considerably more secure than OS X or Windows

~~~
rectang
ChromeOS encourages you to store files using Google Drive. There is the threat
of Google being compromised, yes, even though they take security much more
seriously than the average company. More likely, your own account can be
hacked, since it's out there on the web and not all developers are security-
minded, sadly. But there's also the concern that you can have your Google
account shut down and it may be difficult to get it restored.

I would also like to better understand what profiling data Google collects
during ordinary usage of ChromeOS. I'm not an expert on that subject and don't
want to spread FUD, but when you're logged into the Chrome browser, Google
finds out an awful lot about you through your web habits.

~~~
eli
Assuming you install updates from your OS vendor regularly, than Microsoft or
Apple getting hacked is game over anyway. Google has some if the best tools
available for securing your account (very solid 2fa if you set it up right)

------
carwyn
It's been perfectly possible to do real work on a Chromebook using web IDEs,
Crouton or tools like Termux for some time now. Similarly, Linux on laptops
has been perfectly viable for many many years. I ditched my MacOS experiment
around a decade ago after getting fed up of the terrible package management
story. Fink and macports were trying their best fair play. Better with brew
these days but still not in the same realm as the native Linux package tools
and repositories. Similarly if you're using containers the native story is
just smoother.

~~~
tedmiston
Hypervisor layer aside, I'm not so sure this is the case anymore. Homebrew is
pretty good these days. Even running a setup like dozens of Docker containers
with a local k8s cluster in Docker for Mac works pretty well. I feel like any
friction in between Linux vs Mac dev has become negligible.

The only day to say exception to this is Docker for Mac's power usage.

------
KaiserPro
The pixelbook is rather expensive for what it is.

I have a secondhand hp z620 (32 cores, 64 gigs of ram) and a 4k screen. Total
cost < £700

Whilst being about 4 years old, its still much much faster than a top end
macbook. Yes its not portable. However I don't move around that much at work
(If I do, everything is in git, or one can ssh in from another machine.)

if I need to work from home, I have any old laptop to ssh in and work.

being able to make -j 30 on a large project, is worth every penny, or not
being able to move it about.

~~~
dhd415
I have the same setup and it's great for some development tasks, but its
single-core speed can't match the latest processors. I actually installed
Linux on my company-issued MBP and I run a bunch of dev tools on it via Xwin
from my z620.

------
keenerd
I've been doing that for years:
[http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/](http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/)

Development doesn't require any more CPU than word processing. You're type
stuff up, and there is a pretty strict grammar check. I don't get why people
why people want to run huge things on a laptop. It is way more economical to
shell into a beefy server when you need big iron instead of carrying it with
you.

~~~
ponco
Some people still write code that is compiled.

~~~
cozzyd
And the people who do that tend to use super bloated Dev environments.

~~~
imtringued
I've had the opposite experience so far. Eclipse IDE that uses 1GB+ of RAM?
Compiles java code to bytecode instantly everytime you save. Sublime Text +
gcc for a C++ project? Well, you have to live with the fact that sometimes a
rebuild is going to take more than 5 minutes.

In other words it has nothing to do with how bloated the dev environment is
and more with the fact that some programming languages have features that can
cause excessive build time.

------
sz4kerto
There's no general answer for this question.

I cannot develop on web IDEs or on a box with only 16G RAM. Some others can. I
need to be able to run many containerised service locally, others might only
need a node.js instance.

Depends on what you do. It's like asking whether a motorbike is suitable for
your daily work. If you're a pizza delivery boy then yes. If you are
transporting heavy machinery, then no.

------
ralmidani
If you don't want to buy a MacBook (nor, I presume, a laptop with Windows
preinstalled), do yourself a favor and get an Ubuntu machine from Dell or
System76.

~~~
purple-again
I second this recommendation. I have been dual booting Ubuntu for many years
on my gaming PC's and recently bought a pre made Ubuntu machine from Dell. The
least fun I ever have when installing a new machine is trying to get my
fucking three monitors working the way they should.

The Dell laptop plug and played into my (not thunderbolt, wd15 or something
dock) and all three monitors were literally plug and play. It felt like
Windows again and blew me away.

------
mike-cardwell
That link just says you can run Linux in a VM on a chromebook for development.

You can also run Linux on any other laptop in the World. Natively, or in a VM.

------
JepZ
@cesidio that greatly depends what 'development' means for you. I mean, if it
means developing iOS apps then you probably still have all the trouble which
you have when you are trying to develop anything for the Apple ecosystem
without being part of it. For the Microsoft ecosystem it looks the same.

But if development means to do web development you are just fine, as Linux is
the best platform for that anyway. Other things, like resource intensive stuff
(e.g. C compiling) might still be too much to do it comfortably on a
Chromebook.

------
foodislove
Yes. Most of the time, all you need is a basic computer and internet to SSH
into a more powerful VM in the cloud. I don't host my dev stack on my computer
so local computing power is mute. It's strange but a celeron chromebook is all
I need.

When I travel, I don't take my heavy Macbook Pro. I take my old Acer C720
because it has Bash, a Cloud IDE, and everything I need to code. Just in case
I need to do more, I have KDE on chroot for when I need more tools.

------
llogiq
I'm doing all my development on a HP Chromebook 13 G1. While the CPU is low-
powered, and I since ditched the ChromeOS for a custom Linux, it's a fairly
capable machine, and very cheap for what it offers.

My recent 1-year review is on
[https://llogiq.github.io/2018/03/02/chromebook.html](https://llogiq.github.io/2018/03/02/chromebook.html)

~~~
jimmies
>The downside is that I still have to press Ctrl + L at bootup and avoid
pressing SPACE before the machine boots, otherwise the machine might try to
overwrite my system with a clean ChromeOS install

You can use flashrom to flash the UEFI firmware from MrChromebox. It will get
rid of the ChromeOS recovery stuff and makes it a proper laptop. Remember to
backup your data, as always.

------
mcny
I am typing this on a Chromebook that will soon get the ax. It is a Lenovo
Thinkpad X131E. It came with a 16GB eMMC solid storage and a free SATA port. I
had to open the computer and disassemble it down to the board (thankfully the
documentation is very extensive) to flip the switch that allows me to install
a real BIOS (or the coreboot EFI, that thing with the rabbit logo). I
installed Fedora on it and now I can do everything on a Chromebook. I added a
500GB hard disk I had lying around but with SSD prices no longer climbing up,
I am thinking about getting a 500GB SSD for this computer. Maybe I could even
keep using the SSD after this chromebook dies.

So in this sense, yes I am comfortable doing development on a chromebook but
it really isn't chromebook anymore. It is a Linux machine at this point. The
keyboard is a close approximation of a real Thinkpad and the computer was
cheap enough that I don't mind throwing it in my backpack and using it on the
train.

------
rajington
Two months with the Pixelbook i7, don't regret investing that much on a
Chromebook, which was my main concern. Kept the old MBP just in case and it's
been just sitting there, even through tax season.

Pretty happy with performance, Linux apps work well but still "feel" a little
out of place. Very like how it runs Android apps, so much works but it's just
the issues that DO come up that can be frustrating. If you're not ready for
that experience then it might not make sense to switch your main dev machine.

Doubt I'll ever buy a laptop bigger than this one ever again, but it is a
little harder to dev directly on this, mainly bc of that MBP trackpad, but
this keyboard is MUCH better.

------
mattbreeden
I have a $300 (plus SSD price) Dell Chromebook 13 from a few years ago which I
use
[https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton)
on to run Ubuntu with i3. It's a wonderful machine for light web dev (I've
never tried any really stressful development, I use my fuller spec'ed laptop
for that). Great battery life, light, best keyboard I've used. I don't know
how well it would work for 'serious' development depending on your field, but
it's probably the best starter laptop for programming I could possibly
imagine.

------
liveoneggs
[https://usesthis.com/interviews/junio.c.hamano/](https://usesthis.com/interviews/junio.c.hamano/)
works for this guy but I guess he uses the terminal :)

------
headmelted
There's a few options already, I've written about this exact question:

[https://headmelted.com/coding-on-a-
chromebook-84335cce96c8](https://headmelted.com/coding-on-a-
chromebook-84335cce96c8)

This doesn't take in Crostini, which I'll be following up on - and I intend to
rework the VS Code builds and scripts for ARM to use Crostini instead of
Crouton, but everything discussed is still pretty much the state of play.

I still think it's worth the extra couple of steps by far, but that's because
I just don't have time in my life anymore for all the hassle Chrome OS saves
me from.

------
hanse00
Personally I've done development work on a Pixelbook for a while now (Using a
cloud IDE), and I've enjoyed it greatly.

If being able to run a Linux VM is what it takes for others to do the same,
great.

------
paradroid
I use a 2015 Chromebook Pixel.

\- Stand up an Amazon WorkSpace and RDP to it for Windows work \- Use Android
apps \- Install Ubuntu using crouton

That's pretty much it. Use it all day every day.

------
cyberpanther
You can use Termux on a Chromebook to run Linux already and develop. See
termux.com and [https://medium.com/digitalcrafts/exiting-vim-on-a-touch-
scre...](https://medium.com/digitalcrafts/exiting-vim-on-a-touch-screen-the-
new-development-environment-frontier-d457fb89269f)

This is without going into dev too. You just need to enable android on your
chromebook.

~~~
jacksmith21006
Prefer GNUroot over Termux.

------
swerveonem
That is a funny question, I've been writing code for 10 years and have used a
variety of hardware. At no point has the host OS limited my productivity. I
even used an old ThinkPad with a broken trackpad for a while during a
particularly poor period of my life. Once you learn to use the terminal and
stop being a GUIwarrior, you will have an easier life.

~~~
wilsonnb
Once you know how to use both GUIs and the terminal you will have an easier
life. They both have their place. If you're developing a Windows app, you
should probably use visual studio. If you're doing basic web development then
the terminal makes more sense.

------
onion2k
I do 'serious' development on a Chromebook, and a very low-spec one at that
(Acer Chromebook 11, with an 11" screen and 2GB of ram). What's more, I do
development in user mode rather than developer mode, without using Crostini.
The thing is, very little of what I'm doing actually runs on the Chromebook
itself. I use Codepen.io (which is awesome) for a lot of front-end dev work,
which does SASS, Babel, etc on a remote server for me. I use Codenvy to do
more complex things, again on a remote server. I do some Node and Python on
the machine itself (using Termux), but that's very light-weight in terms of
resources. It's still proper development though. The things I make end up on
servers being used by thousands of people.

I'd do frontend things on the machine itself if Chrome let me access
localhost, but it doesn't. (Weirdly, Firefox for Android does, but that
doesn't have any dev tools).

The problem with asking whether Chromebooks are ready for 'serious'
development is that development is a _huge_ topic that covers everything from
editing a config file in VIM to building a UI in XCode. You can't answer a yes
or no to a question like that.

tl;dr It's great but I wouldn't want to run Android Studio on it? My iMac
struggles with that...

------
PascLeRasc
Can anyone recommend a cheap used Chromebook to check out how development
would be on it?

------
infinii
Slightly OT but which development laptop has best keyboard? I can't stand my
circa 2012 rMBP keyboard (and the newer ones are even worse). I'm guessing a
Thinkpad?? But I can't find one with good battery, screen and weight.

------
Gys
Only a Mac allows to compile for iOS plus MacOS. So there is little choice if
you want to keep all options open.

------
shiado
Chromebooks have been ready for serious development for a while now, provided
the limited hardware can suffice. The last release of this was a year ago, so
perhaps there are better options now?
[https://galliumos.org/](https://galliumos.org/)

~~~
jasonvorhe
That's still just another Linux distribution with a few improvements to
Chromebook-compatibility. I'm still hoping for a team to form around Chromium
OS to better integrate open source into it, so that people can run something
like Chrome OS without having to have a Google account. I'm disappointed that
there isn't something like a new approach to Firefox OS using Chromium OS from
Mozilla. In a couple of years, Google will move everything to Fuchsia and away
from Linux and then everyone who doesn't want to run Windows/macOS/Fuchsia for
privacy or "openness" reasons will still be stuck with the classic desktop
Linux without the improvements of storing userdata in some kind of personal
cloud per default.

------
choadrocker
With crouton, and now native linux support, absolutely

------
jacksmith21006
Have a Pixel book and been using the new GNU/Linux support and supported
everything thrown at it. Supports Docker, Wine, Eclipse, AS, and Steam.

------
mbid
The hardware of every chromebook I know is enough to run a terminal emulator
and a browser. You can install a gnu/linux distribution on most x86 based
chromebooks. Gnu/linux is arguably better suited for "serious" development, so
I don't understand the premise in the question.

------
RyJones
I have the latest MacBook pro and the latest Pixel book. They keyboard on the
MacBook is passable. The keyboard on the Pixel book is garbage. That the Pixel
book can fold into a tablet is pretty nice.

For me, the lackluster keyboard puts paid to the idea of developing on the
Pixel book. However - as an interface to Google online services, it's great.

~~~
jasonvorhe
Interesting observation. Everyone who touched my Pixelbook had nothing but
praise for keyboard. Especially those coming from a touchbar Macbook Pro. Most
reviews I've liked the keyboard very much. The only weakness of the keyboard
is the uneven backlight.

------
yani
Judging by your questions it sounds like you want an adventure and excitement
in your life. You will get it all with the chromebook. You will be able to do
everything with it. At the same time you will encounter issues that others
havent yet. You will be on your own to solve them due to the low popularity of
Chromebooks.

