
Data science on a chromebook - simplystats2
https://simplystatistics.org/2017/08/29/data-science-on-a-chromebook/
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JoshMnem
Instead of showing people what can be done with a restricted computer, why not
encourage them to use non-restricted computers instead? Data science on a
Chromebook that has Linux installed would be better.

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dws
A seatmate on a recent long flight had an Asus Chromebook with Linux side-
loaded via Crouton, and was doing exploratory data analysis in Jupyter
notebooks (mostly using R). Response seemed reasonably snappy. The trade-off
for him was long- battery life and a laptop he wouldn't cry over if it didn't
survive the trip, vs. being restricted to doing analysis on (relatively, for
him) small data samples.

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jethro_tell
I use mine full time for systems eng and devOps type tasks. All GUI tasks are
handled by chrome with the exception of my password safe which is an android
app. I use crouton for a shell and ssh to local host with the ssh extension.

I love it, it's clean, lite, updated all the time. It's the reverse of my old
workflow which was a browser on linux. Now I run linux on a browswer (same
thing really) and google handles drivers, battery life, copy/paste, font
rendering, graphics card management/ x11 configuration. . . . All the things
that suck or take real work about using a linux laptop.

Super fast setup too. I can wipe it when I'm going somewhere and have it up
and fully ready to use in 10-15 minutes. (mostly I don't, but there are times
when that seems like the best option.)

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JoshMnem
Linux isn't that difficult to use any more. I didn't need to do any special
configuration with my current laptop. Battery life is about 11-13 hours.
ThinkPad t460. 24 Gb of RAM. USD $1,900 including tax, shipping, and a 4-year,
next-day, at-home repair plan where they will drive to my home to fix it on
the next business day, even if I spill coffee on it.

I don't understand why people encourage the use of restricted technology. If
consumers say that restricted technology is okay (by buying it and
recommending it), eventually we won't have a choice any more.

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rixed
Did you manage to buy this machine without paying the Microsoft levy?

One of the few things I like with Chromebooks is that you don't pay a license
for software that's bundled with it.

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JoshMnem
I don't know how the price is calculated behind the scenes. I paid a total of
$1,900 and am happy with what I got for that price. I completely deleted
Windows 10 when it arrived and installed GNU/Linux.

You do pay for Chromebook software with your data.

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grondilu
Chromebooks are going to be awesome whenever Webassembly comes to maturity.

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rjeli
It's also very simple and quick to run a Jupyter notebook on your VPS,
accessing it from your browser. It's how I do deep learning work from my Air.
There are AMIs with tensorflow+ already installed.

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blueblob
At $20/mo in DigitalOcean services that are only required if you're running on
a chromebook, why not just run on an inexpensive PC? It's seemingly long-term
more expensive to do it this way.

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neaden
From the article: "One of the best parts about the fully cloudy/Chrome OS
requirement is this means that from the user perspective everything is always
in sync. I log off the computer at home, come to work, log on and its like I’m
on the same computer." So using a single computer wouldn't provide that,
unless you took it with you which the author would apparently prefer not to
do.

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williamstein
I wrote the first versions of CoCalc on a chromebook, for use in data science
_education_ (mostly my own classes initially)...

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Scarbutt
I haven't tried it, but as developers, isn't using a small screen all day
everyday becomes stressful after some time?

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jdietrich
It very much depends on your workflow and the tools you need. If you rely on a
full-fat IDE, it'll probably be a disaster; if you're mainly a command-line
user, you might be pleasantly surprised. A small screen can be quite relaxing,
because it constrains the amount of visual clutter. If you've got a giant 4k
display, there's a temptation to fill all those pixels with distracting and
non-essential information. A little 11" screen forces you to focus on what's
essential.

I wouldn't want to read a book-sized newspaper, but I also wouldn't want to
read a broadsheet-sized novel.

