

An Engineer's take on Chrome OS - Me1000
http://synack.me/blog/an-engineers-take-on-chrome-os

======
NoodleIncident
I feel like we as a community are being wine-racked[1].

I had long ago written off Chromebooks as completely useless for my purposes,
but all of the attention being paid to the Pixel really shows off how much
ChromeOS is already capable of.

Once you realize that, why not buy a $250 version that does everything the
more expensive model does?

[1] In which restaurants place $100 bottles of wine on their racks, not in the
real expectation that many will buy it, but to make the other wines look
cheaper.

------
rosstafarian
The pixel seems like a total waste from a hardware standpoint, everything he
mentioned would work just as well one of those $250 samsung chromebooks. He
also had to fight with the os to get anything useful done. Again i can see
myself spending a few hundred bucks for a laptop to carry with me and not
worry about to get some basic tasks done, but why would anyone want a pixel?

~~~
cliffbean
The Pixel's screen is a reason why some people want it.

~~~
raldi
Also, unlike the $250 laptops, it doesn't feel like garbage in your hands.

------
ConstantineXVI
I'm still perplexed by the Pixel, but I'm in love with my ARM Chromebook as an
'away' computer for it's simplicity. It's not a full PC, but 90% of the time
browser + SSH is all I need away from the desk anyway, and it does both very
well (not to mention the keyboard and trackpad are far better than most
laptops in the $300 range I've used)

Pedantic note: you can tweak the font size for the SSH app from it's options
('right'-click the app, it's not exposed in the UI)

~~~
habosa
I feel the same way. My Samsung ARM Chromebook is one of the best gadgets I
have ever purchased.

------
Spittie
Just in case anyone is interested: I haven't tried it, since I don't own a
Chromebook, but Crouton (<https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton>) seems to do
exactly what he's doing in the article, only automated.

------
peatmoss
My wife and father both use the Samsung ARM chromebook (guess who doesn't like
tech support). I was a CR-48 tester too. I love ChromeOS, but I'm kind of
disappointed in how little uptake there has been of NaCl. In particular, if
there were a way to run a decently feature-filled emacs in a tab, I'd probably
make the jump.

~~~
graue
This makes me think - is there any reason you couldn't compile Emacs or Vim in
Emscripten, and adapt it for the web? Maybe with some kind of in-browser
terminal emulator? Quick googling suggests no one has tried this yet... I find
that surprising.

(The Vim bindings in CodeMirror[1] are surprisingly decent, but it's still not
the real thing.)

[1] <http://codemirror.net/demo/vim.html>

~~~
jyu
Stuff like this is where search in its current form fails.

Action.IO allows for browser based coding, and potentially development in the
cloud. Heroku started out doing development in the cloud before they pivoted
to PAAS.

~~~
graue
I watched the video. That's cool, but not what I had in mind — they're running
Vim on a remote server, not in the browser itself.

------
deckiedan
I was given a second hand CR-48 when my 'regular' laptop died 4 months ago. I
repartitioned it and installed Ubuntu, and have been using it as my primary
personal computer since then.

Every time it boots up, it does have an annoying and scary unhappy chromebook,
"press space to make chromeos normal" screen, but since I rarely need to boot
it from scratch, it's not a big deal.

I have an external 64GB USB stick which I'm using as my main media & other
storage, as the on board SSD is tiny. Fast though - LibreOffice opens faster
than MS office on Windows... That is in fact one of the most annoying things
about it, is the lack of HD space. I have to constantly be aware of how
much/little space I have left, and make sure to clear the apt cache
frequently, not install too many big packages, etc.

I'm running awesomewm as my main window manager, often with firefox fullscreen
when browsing.

Work wise, I'm mainly doing dev ops, and full stack development on this
machine. I also do enough media related work that I couldn't use this as my
main work computer, and have a work iMac at the office.

It's kind of limited, but I kind of like it. I'm thinking to build a desktop
computer (since I have an external screen already) with the beef for working
on large photo editing, and using that as a server & workstation when needed,
but sticking with this for portability.

I'm not sure I'd buy one - certainly not a pixel at that price... the long
battery life is great, the weight and form factor is great, but a better
processor and "real" HD would make life quite a lot easier at times.

~~~
thingummywut
So you're saying that the 2.5 year old CR-48's test hardware (2 GB Ram, 1.6
Ghz Atom processor, 16 GB SSD) is why you're not buying a Pixel?

~~~
deckiedan
No... I can't afford a Pixel, and if I was going to spend that amount of money
on a computer, I'd probably buy something with more 'oomph'. Sure a hi-res
screen is nice, but apparently not enough content is there to make it really
worth while. For DTP and media work, I could see it being really good, but
since those applications aren't really ChromeOS friendly (yet?), I don't see
the point.

For general web use (browser, email, terminal) a 'regular' chromebook is quite
usable - even a 2 year old one.

------
ahelwer
OT, although it was mentioned in the article:

I've found that the ctrl+[ shortcut is much more effective than ESC for
switching out of insert mode in vim. Is this shortcut not commonly known?

~~~
zachlatta
I'm always surprised when others don't know about it. To me, using escape
defeats the purpose of Vim. It's almost like having to reach for your mouse.

~~~
Nick_C
Unless you've swapped CapsLock for Esc. Then it's easy as pie. In ~/.Xmodmap:

    
    
        ! Swap Caps Lock with Esc
        remove Lock = Caps_Lock
        keysym Escape = Caps_Lock
        keysym Caps_Lock = Escape
        add Lock = Caps_Lock

------
wavelander
A much needed perspective. All I've read are the H/W specs. Though I'm still
apprehensive about spending so much on it, it does change how I see it. Still,
better options seem abound.

------
teeja
Reads like an advert.

------
recoiledsnake
>Boot into recovery mode with Esc-Refresh-Power, hold Ctrl-D at the right
moment, confirm that you want to wipe the stateful partition, and away you go.
Yes, switching to Developer Mode requires deleting all non-OS data on the
Chromebook.

Why would you need to wipe the main partition in order to be able to dual
boot? Also, I hear that this scary screen comes up every time you boot for 30
seconds unless you press Ctrl-D everytime.

[http://liliputing.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-
content/uploads...](http://liliputing.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/dev-mode.jpg)

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Developer mode's designed[0] to avoid using it to bypass CrOS's security. The
relevant points:

* the 5-minute wipe both hinders access to the owner's data and makes it unlikely the OS can be replaced with a malicious variant without being caught in the act

* the warning screens ensure the owner's aware they're in devmode

* Hiding the Ctrl-D bypass makes it appear the only option is recovery, you won't know about it unless you've enabled devmode yourself.

[0] [http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-
docs/d...](http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-
docs/developer-mode)

