
Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine? - msrivas
I love the design on the new pixelbook - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.google.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;product&#x2F;google_pixelbook but I have a hard time believing that its of any use for a developer or even a remote power user. Does anyone have any experience using it as their primary machine and for what purposes ?
======
notacoward
I used to. I had the second-gen Pixel that has apparently become the third-gen
Pixelbook because Google couldn't even resist stealing the name of their own
product for something completely different.

I loved it. I could have run Linux natively, but I've spent too much of my
life already fighting all the familiar recurring sound/video and
suspend/resume and wifi issues on Linux laptops. No, it's not because I'm bad
at it. I worked at Red Hat at the time, where most of the people who actually
fix this stuff for you also work, and I was no worse than others around me.
But being good at fixing problems isn't the same as not having to put up with
them in the first place. I don't want to have to take even ten minutes to
debug a system issue in the middle of trying to do something else while I'm on
the road, over and over again every month or so. The whole point was to have a
base platform that was feature-complete and stable, plus a full Linux
environment (via crouton) with all of my favorite tools available
simultaneously. It also helped that it's a beautiful piece of hardware, with a
nice (somewhat square-ish) screen and a trackpad that works and the best
battery life I've seen so far.

It was really like having two laptops instead of one, each suited to its
purpose. The only reason I don't still use it is that I couldn't be bothered
replicating all of the "special sauce" to conform with the infosec
requirements of my current employer on an OS different than the one they
installed on the laptop they gave me. If I were to switch jobs again, or
retire, I'd gladly go back to the Pixel.

~~~
grepthisab
I have a Dell XPS13 Dev Edition. I run Ubuntu on it natively, but really
hitting the same things you describe. Ubuntu is usually a joy to use, but
having to debug random things at random times while at work or on the road
really stinks. I'm really on the fence at this point about just getting a
Macbook. My work laptop is a Macbook and really polished for development.

~~~
schmrz
I'm also using Dell XPS 13 (model 9360, non-touch, 1080p screen) with Fedora
26, and I haven't had any issues. This is by far the best linux laptop I've
had. Just another data point in case someone is looking into buying these.

~~~
notacoward
Linux on laptops is like a disease. It's rare that _everyone_ gets sick, but
it's bad enough that many do. Even at Red Hat, where the employees
collectively know more than anyone about making Linux run on laptops, internal
mailing lists were often full of gripes about issues. If it wasn't the Big
Three that I already mentioned, it was fans running constantly and batteries
being sucked dry, switching monitor resolutions or dis/connecting a second
monitor leaving things in a weird state, the utter impossibility of getting
trackpads to work as well as they did under Windows/MacOS, international
keyboard layouts not behaving properly, camera remaining locked when it
shouldn't, and so on and so on ad nauseam. If you never hit _any_ of these
then good for you, but I can say with absolute confidence that such an
experience is exceptional.

~~~
sigi45
Had arch linux running on an Samsung ativ book 9. No real/relevant issues.

------
fortes
Yes, been using it as my primary development machine for the last two years. I
work on a large Node / React codebase, and occasionally do design work.

My setup:

* Chromebook Pixel 2 in dev mode

* Crouton ([https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/)) running CLI-only Debian stretch

* Google's SSH app ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo))

* Tmux running with NeoVim, cmus for music

My dotfiles and setup scripts are all here:
[https://github.com/fortes/dotfiles](https://github.com/fortes/dotfiles)

Overall, I like this better than the old mac setup I have. Being in dev mode
(and having to enter crouton chroot once per boot) aren't ideal, but I've
gotten used to it. I'm hoping that maybe we'll get first class support soon
though (
[https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/742f8j/how_chrome...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/742f8j/how_chromeos_vm_and_containers_will_seem_to_run/)
)

~~~
msrivas
What do you use for the design work ? Just standard debian based software ?
Any hacks to get adobe software working ?

~~~
fortes
Design work done mostly done in browser via Figma:
[http://www.figma.com/](http://www.figma.com/)

Debian is strictly via CLI, I don't do any GUI apps via crouton, felt too
janky and I didn't really need the overhead.

------
leephillips
They're fine machines once you install real Linux on them. The hardware is
excellent and they make great laptops for doing real work. Here are some notes
about installing Xubuntu on the 2013 model. I hope some of this transfers to
newer models: [https://lee-phillips.org/pxsetup/](https://lee-
phillips.org/pxsetup/)

~~~
hellofunk
> The hardware is excellent

Is there a particular model you recommend? Seems like there are a variety of
chromebooks, I wouldn't expect them to all be the same quality, but perhaps
they are?

~~~
leephillips
I was writing about the Google Pixel models in particular - great hardware.
Don't have experience with other makes, except Toshiba, which I bought for my
children. I don't recommend those, despite the low price and good specs,
because they don't honor their warranties.

------
hellofunk
Is anyone concerned about privacy using a Google laptop? I noticed recently
that for years I've relied on Chrome's private browsing feature only to learn
that it does _not_ disable geolocation (unlike Safari) and websites always
know where I am located even when browsing privately. And turning this off can
change depending on the version of Chrome (in fact I cannot figure out how to
turn it off in my current version). I wonder how much intrusion these
chromebook's make into your privacy? User data is a core of Google's business
model, so that is a big problem for me.

~~~
atheiste
My company uses Chromebooks as primary computers with our own fork of
ChromiumOS. Our build excludes Google keys thus hypothetically offers
reinforced privacy.

Our fork is called NayuOS (
[https://nayuos.nexedi.com](https://nayuos.nexedi.com) ) and is a true system
for hackers. It erases user folders on every restart and no extensions are
allowed. It is very hard to track and since the Chromebooks are very cheap it
is easy to exchange devices often.

It has to be run in Developer Mode thus you have writable /usr/. Chrome Brew
is fully functional thanks to that but it is a security hazard.

My company moved everything to cloud so we access everything via browser. It
was hard to get used to it but in the end it is a huge time saver. Google went
the same direction.

~~~
whyagaindavid
Thanks for your wonderful info. I will bring this in our next meeting to our
CTO. BTW, link is not working: [https://nayuos.nexedi.com/build-your-own-
image](https://nayuos.nexedi.com/build-your-own-image)

------
ralmidani
I used a Samsung ChromeBook 2 (ARM) for about 3 years. You can load a full
GNU/Linux environment such as Debian or Ubuntu with Crouton, but you have to
enable developer mode.

This involves an annoying beep every time you turn your machine on (or
otherwise hitting ctrl-d at the right time), and you run the risk of disabling
developer mode--thereby reformatting your drive--if you accidentally hit
Spacebar.

Unless they're changing how dev mode works on the new PixelBooks, I do not
recommend using one as a dev machine. This year, I bought a Dell XPS Developer
Edition and never looked back.

~~~
keenerd
If you are worried about that, just don't use Crouton. Completely remove all
of the Chrome OS partitions and run linux natively.

I typically get several months of uptime. Suspend/resume has been flawless
too. Pressing one button combo a couple times a year hasn't been a show
shopper.

~~~
henrythewasp
I did that on an Acer Chromebook and installed GalliumOS
([https://galliumos.org/](https://galliumos.org/)) which is a lightweight
Linux distro for Chromebooks.

~~~
crispytx
That's badass. I didn't know you could do a full linux install on a
chromebook. I used to run Ubuntu using crouton but I had to press all these
crazy button combinations to boot up in developer mode and then enter some
more shell commands to finally bring up Ubuntu.

------
tomaspollak
I use a 1st gen Chromebook Pixel as a secondary machine, for light development
(e.g. personal projects), and I'm actually _NOT_ using crouton these days.

I used to have Linuxbrew for installing packages (git, gcc, etc), and a non-
GUI chroot through crouton, which I used for anything that wouldn't build
using Linuxbrew's toolchain.

However, a few weeks ago Linuxbrew completely broke for me, so I decided to
try something new, and instead of reinstalling it I got Nix (the package
manager from NixOS) working via proot.

Nix's toolchain pretty does everything I need so I haven't had the need to run
crouton anymore. I also run Docker containers via rkt.

Finally, I tweaked the crosh command so it opens a shell directly without
having to type 'shell'. I know it might be somewhat picky, but when you're
constantly firing up new terminals it can become a bit of a PITA. :)

If anyone's interested I can post some links for reference, or maybe even do a
writeup.

------
nickjj
I would say as long as you can install GalliumOS (which is a custom xubuntu
build of Linux designed for Chromebooks) on that Pixelbook, then it should be
good to go.

Personally, I installed GalliumOS on a $350 Chromebook (Toshiba CB35) and
while I don't use it as a primary machine I do quite a bit of "real"
development on it.

For example, it has no problem running fairly large Rails applications with
Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch running inside of Docker containers. I often
have a decent amount of browser tabs, streaming music through Youtube and
other typical developer things open at the same time.

Key features for me are a 1080p IPS diplay, a great keyboard and it was only
$350 even after buying a third party SSD to swap in.

Full details, a review and guide on how it's done can be found at:
[https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-
chromeboo...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromebook-
cb35-into-a-linux-development-environment-with-galliumos)

------
neverminder
I have a 2015 Pixel LS. Wiped out useless Chrome OS, installed vanilla Ubuntu
(with Linux Samus kernel [https://github.com/raphael/linux-
samus](https://github.com/raphael/linux-samus)). With 16 GB of RAM it handles
just about anything I throw at it, like for instance multiple projects on
IntelliJ without breaking a sweat.

The 2560x1700 (3:2) screen is magnificent. Design/hardware is top notch,
especially USB Type-C charging. Once you get used to plugging in a charger
from either side of the laptop and using the same charger (I have Nexus 6P)
for your phone too - you'll never want back to the whole multiple proprietary
charger bullshit. I can even charge this laptop from a portable battery pack
used for phones.

There are some minor downsides of course, such as absence of a conventional
BIOS/UEFI, delete key, F key markings, but I can live with that, there's no
such thing as perfect when it comes to laptops.

------
KozmoNau7
I used an Acer Chromebook 13 (Tegra K1-based) for a couple of years, not as my
primary machine, but as my only laptop. I paid $350 for it on sale, in 2014.

Generally, it worked just fine. 99% of the stuff I do on a computer these days
is via a web browser, so I didn't feel like I was missing too much. I also
highly appreciated the light weight, fanless design and 10+ hour battery life.
And the touchpad was seriously good, I'm talking Macbook-level quality, an
absolute delight to use.

However, it did have some performance issues. Forget having more than 10 tabs
open at the same time, I had to install The Great Suspender to avoid
slowdowns. Having music playing in the background from Google Play Music while
simultaneously browsing other websites was impossible. Initially, it would
play 1080p Youtube videos just fine, but thanks to various updates, codec
changes and such, I had to force it down to 720p30 by the end, just to be able
to watch videos without frame dropping.

And of course I couldn't install anything on it that wasn't a Chrome
plugin/app. So no Spotify client (and the current web player sucks, big time).
No games. No decent video player, and the preinstalled one can't play videos
with AAC sound, probably due to licensing issues.

After some time, I got fed up with all of these issues, so I sold it and
bought a refurb Thinkpad T420, also for around $350. It's bigger, heavier, has
a worse touchpad and gets worse battery life. On the other hand, the
performance is light years ahead and I can install everything I want, not just
whatever can function in a browser.

------
mbid
I use the second edition of the Chromebook Pixel (i.e. from 2015) as my main
machine. I've shrunk the chromeos partition and run Arch on it. At first, the
mainline kernel barely supported the device. Touchpad and sound didn't work.
Nowadays, it's mostly OK. The touchpad driver seems to be not high-quality
though: It expects some device to have a hard-coded id which is assigned non-
deterministically during boot/wakeup. This means that I have to reset it
sometimes using a script the good people at [https://github.com/raphael/linux-
samus](https://github.com/raphael/linux-samus) have written. Chromeos has a
workaround or something, so before I found linux-samus, I had to reboot into
chromeos once to fix it -- extremely annoying.

I have a bigger problem with charging. My chromebook doesn't recognize high-
power chargers (both the original one and one I bought afterwards) and charges
extremely slowly, to the point that it even _unloads_ when the CPU is busy.
Happens in chromeos too though.

------
mattbgates
I've been using a Chromebook as my primary laptop for the past 3 or 4 years...
I do my programming, my blogging, and even photo editing on there. I have one
Chromebook that has Linux on it as an alternative, just in case I need SSH or
FTP access. But primarily, I'm doing everything on the Internet. There's a
website or Chrome extension for just about everything.

Since most of my coding happens in PHP and MySQL.. I don't really need an
official platform for that... I just use whatever tools my host provides and
thats good enough.

I love it because I don't have to deal with "loading times" or viruses or
anything like that. The worst thing that happens is that I open up too many
tabs at once and it might crash every so often, warranting a restart, and
while most devs might not recommend it, I do recommend it. I'll never go back!

Another advantage is that I only buy Chromebooks with T-Mobile SIMM card
adaptions built in, as I can connect it and be wireless no matter where I go.
So I won't buy any Chromebook that is not capable of that.

------
bkolobara
I'm wondering how feasible is it to run your development 100% on a remote
machine. One of the drawbacks is that you need always access to internet, but
this would not be a problem for me.

I don't think that ssh + vim would work for me. I like GUI editors. Is there a
good self hosted cloud IDE? Or is it maybe possible to run VS Code on a remote
machine and access it through a web interface?

~~~
dsr_
100% remote development is the norm at my company -- not remote from home,
although that's an option you can work out with your manager. You can mount
your sandbox's filesystem via sshfs, and use whatever editor you like. If your
laptop dies, you really haven't lost any work.

~~~
icebraining
Doesn't it get slow? I'm running Firefox with a profile on a mounted sshfs
directory, and it freezes for a few seconds quite regularly, despite having a
decent connection.

~~~
dsr_
Nobody's complained, and I am one of the people responsible for fixing such
complaints.

ISTR Firefox does an awful lot of writes in order to maintain state;
[https://www.servethehome.com/firefox-is-eating-your-ssd-
here...](https://www.servethehome.com/firefox-is-eating-your-ssd-here-is-how-
to-fix-it/) is from more than a year ago, but I wouldn't be too surprised if
something similar were happening to you.

------
jcun4128
From my experience try to get one that has a non-arm chip (intel) with regard
to being able to install everything. I almost could install everything
(crouton) but like VS Code wasn't supported.

I have this "fear" that my laptop will be stolen so I try to run everything
off a USB (attached to my keys) so laptop is pretty much disposable assuming
~$100 in cost (used).

The ram/storage is a concern and I'm talking the junk 2GB 32GB setups. I
picked up an ASUS TP200SA 11.6" transformer lately. I know not really able to
do much on a 11.6" computer.

Still it's cool got all my stuff setup but can't have different stacks
configured (not enough ram) so remote to develop. At least plain JS you can
run by browser.

Just my thoughts,definitely got my two screen setup at home just bought a 22"
1080p monitor ohhh yeah.

~~~
andrewchambers
your usb key might get stolen. Full disk encryption and regular backups
probably buy better assurance.

~~~
jusssi
Also, in my anecdotal experience, the most common failure mode of an USB stick
seems to be going completely dead without any prior warning. So regular
backups, definitely.

~~~
jcun4128
Yeah that sucks. I did read that the constant/read write does decrease life,
maybe that was specific to SD cards but probably applies to USB as well.

I don't know... one of those things where you think too much about it... like
what about general consumers with a password on their Windows/Mac computer...
is that "secure"? I don't know.

You could potentially access that hard drive by taking it apart assuming it
wasn't a soldered on storage device.

~~~
keshet
All flash-based memory devices have a limited number of write/erase cycles.
Internal flash memories have more sophisticated strategies to extend memory
life but they all rely on having spare memory available. Try not to go past
80% usage.

~~~
jcun4128
Thanks for the tip. Probably should have bought a larger USB 3.0 than 32GB,
the Ultra Fits are nice by San Disk checked read/write pretty good (have
numbers if needed)

------
wiredfool
I tried to use a chromebook as an on-the-go machine where I wouldn't be too
worried if it was stolen, but I wasn't successful. The requirements were:

    
    
      * Not Developer mode. I want the full security of verified boot.
    
      * All Security keys and whatnot needed to be on the yubi key.
    

The ssh client did work with ssh-agent and the yubi keys, so that was good.
Establishing ssh sessions from remote machines in parallel didn't work well
(e.g., using capistrano), but that's an easyish hack to do serially. I found
the ssh client to be a little wonky and not terribly stable.

Termux seemed to be a good alternative, but I couldn't get gpg-agent working
with the yubi key.

~~~
keenerd
> _Not Developer mode. I want the full security of verified boot._

So you ran something inside of ChromeOS? It seems like a better option would
be to replace the bootloader with CoreBoot (which doesn't have a dev mode) and
you can add your own keys for whatever OS you choose.

~~~
wiredfool
Which seems the hard way to get to an os that I have to manage myself. If I
wanted a linux machine, I'd get a thinkpad or something and do it that way.

I have to trust something, somewhere. With ChromeOS + ssh and the keys stored
on a yubi key,I'm pretty sure that if someone lifts the machine without the
key, there's not a whole lot they can do with it, other then factory reset it
and move on.

In doing that though, I am trusting a few bits of software from the chrome app
store, and that's probably the weakest link. But it's an order of magnitude
less code than a linux distro.

------
wffurr
I did this for a few months, sort of. I used the Secure Shell Chrome app[1] to
connect to a server where I do my actual work. It worked about as well as a
Macbook did for the same purpose - side-by-side Chrome and ssh windows.

It was fine for building and testing web app changes. I used Chrome Remote
Desktop to test with Firefox and IE. It was fine for building and testing
Android apps but only when I was physically next to the remote workstation to
plug in a device for adb. I think there might be some weird hack to tunnel adb
over ssh through your Chromebook, but I never got that to work.

It was a bit more cumbersome to get personal and work Chrome profiles running
on the same monitor. You can sign in to multiple accounts at once, but they're
separate desktops. However, you can right-click on a title bar for a "move to
other session" option. A ChromeOS PM showed me that trick; no idea how a user
is supposed to discover that.

The other things I missed on ChromeOS were 1Password (the Chrome extension
relies on the desktop app being present) and BetterTouchTool (for programming
additional trackpad gestures and remapping mouse buttons).

[1]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-
shell/pnhec...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-
shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo)

------
djaychela
I had a 2015 Pixel for about 6 months; originally used it just using ChromeOS
and it was great in every respect for everyday use (screen in particular was
fantastic), but I couldn't find a suitable solution for using it for
programming in Python - all the web-based solutions weren't as good as Pycharm
which I've been using on my desktop at home, and while I'm not a professional
programmer, I am spending a fair bit of time doing it as I learn/improve -
particularly when I may not have constant internet (such as on a train), so I
wanted another solution. That led me to put GalliumOS on it...

I've also got a cheap Acer chromebook (which got me started on the whole
ChromeOS trip), which I'd already put GalliumOS on and found it pretty usable
overall - indeed almost 'throwaway' because of the low cost secondhand (I paid
£60 for it in the UK).

GalliumOS was generally pretty good on both machines - giving access to Linux
software which was generally easy to install, but the issue on the Chromebook
was the battery life/power consumption and management; it seemed to be running
the fan a lot, and went from the usual 8-10 hours on ChromeOS for the Pixel
down to maybe 2 or 3, which kind of defeated the object of having it.

During this time I got a MacBook Air at the right price secondhand, and that
has taken over as my main 'browsing/mobile use/learning Python' machine, so I
put the Pixel back to stock and sold it (amazingly for more than I paid for
it).

If there had been a native Python IDE for the Pixel I would have kept it - it
really was a high quality piece of equipment - but alas I didn't find a
solution that I was happy with (and certainly not one that made use of the
Pixel's true power and quality).

------
plg
What about internet access? Are there still chromebooks with built-in cellular
data? If they released a Chromebook with built-in LTE and a google-hosted data
plan with unlimited data (from chromeOS), for a reasonable price, I would be
all over it.

I use a MacBook Pro which I like but 95% of the time I am doing stuff I could
be doing using ChromeOS.

------
hoosieree
I had one of the 2012 Samsung ARM Chromebooks, then when its battery started
to die I replaced it (earlier this year) with an Acer R13 (also ARM).

For development I mostly only need git, ssh, and emacs. So I use the cli-extra
target from crouton for an Ubuntu command line.

Occasionally I need to run something graphical so I have a 2nd chroot for X
windows.

The R13 is nearly perfect as far as the hardware goes - high-resolution
touchscreen, 12+ hours of battery life, trackpad and keyboard are the best
I've used (better in my opinion than Macbook Pro). The processor is 64-bit and
it has 4GB of RAM, which is usually plenty.

Software is another issue. Most of the time if there isn't already an Arm64
binary, compiling from source works. I view claims of "cross platform" with
total suspicion nowadays.

One thing I miss is hardware accelerated graphics in crouton. ChromeOS
supports it but the driver isn't open as far as I know.

------
navigaid
Just a comment. ChromeOS may soon be able to run OCI containers.

Source:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WilliamGreene76/posts/Qosa9BstS...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WilliamGreene76/posts/Qosa9BstSHu)

------
crispytx
I bought a Chromebook two years ago thinking I could wipe out Chrome OS
completely and install Ubuntu to use as my primary machine. But I actually was
only able to "sort of" install linux using crouton. It was cool but kind of
annoying, you had to press all these crazy button combinations to boot up in
developer mode and then enter shell commands to bring up Ubuntu. Pretty neat,
but I was left with so little storage space I wasn't able to install Android
studio so I couldn't use it as my primary laptop. Sadly, I don't think
chromebooks make for very good primary machines. However, I wrote this comment
using a chromebook, so I obviously dig them even if they have a ways to go.

------
fabianTMC
I was using it as my primary machine for the last 2 months. It was still a
challenge even after putting crouton on it and at times things boggled down to
a snail's pace.

The best multi-tasking I got was when I was running VS Code, mysql and mongodb
servers, one node web server, one python web server, music from the main
chrome browser and opera on crouton.

I was trying to build Android apps on it but Android Studio is a no go so I
just ended up building it from the command line. I couldn't run anything other
than the editor and the build process at the time and things became very very
slow until the process was done. I only did this once or twice though so I'm
sure it would have eventually hung the entire system.

------
leephillips
Here's a guy who used an ipad and remote servers:

[http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad-
linode-1-year-...](http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad-
linode-1-year-later)

------
robgibbons
I used to run a Samsung Chromebook 2 13" with Crouton, so I could run XFCE
Linux next to Chrome OS. It was an excellent setup for the money, aside from a
few drawbacks:

\- ARM processor (excellent power efficiency and battery, but you can't run
certain Linux packages, or programs such as Sublime Text) \- Limited storage
space (so you must use USB volumes, or server/cloud storage) \- Physical
security (chroot runs somewhat at a compromise to security)

Other than those, it really was a surprisingly great little Linux machine.
Very lightweight, outstanding battery life, and capable of 99% of what I need
as a web developer and for casual entertainment.

------
jholman
Typing this from a first-gen Chromebook Pixel, which is my primary machine for
hobby programming (I don't currently code professionally, and I have a beast
of a Wintel desktop for gaming).

It's lightweight, build quality is good, screen is terrific. I got it for a
great price, too. I think the original retail price of the version I bought
was a bit high, but that new version you just linked looks like a good
price/performance.

I really only want a shell plus a browser anyway. Though I've had X11/XFCE
working in the past.

All in all I'm quite happy with it for this purpose. Though if price was no
object, I'd probably reconsider.

------
neilsimp1
I use an Acer C720P with GalliumOS installed on it as my secondary dev
machine. My main rig is a Windows desktop.

I have no real complaints with Gallium or the C720P, it's a really solid
little machine, and it's super fast. My only gripe is the keyboard - there's
no delete key, there's a magnifying glass where the Caps Lock should go, and
that gets mapped to Super, and the worst part, I only have F1-F10, missing F11
and F12.

I'm sure there's a good way to remap some keys to get F11 and F12, but I
haven't figured out a good key combination that doesn't interfere with other
keyboard shortcuts.

~~~
yathern
On my Acer c720, alt-backspace acts as delete. Not sure if that's ChromeOSes
doing or the keyboard firmware.

I've gotten so used to it that I had to make my windows machine do the same
thing!

~~~
neilsimp1
Thanks! That worked for me. I had no idea.

------
bgrohman
I use a Samsung Chromebook 3 with Linux installed in a chroot via Crouton.

[http://bryangrohman.com/ubuntu-i3wm-
chromebook/](http://bryangrohman.com/ubuntu-i3wm-chromebook/)

It's a bit underpowered, but it works just fine for my personal use which
includes some light coding. It would be way underpowered to use for my day job
in any capacity other than ssh-ing into other machines. Then again, it is one
of the cheapest Chromebooks available at $169, so you get what you pay for :)

------
keenerd
Yes. It has been great and I've written about it:
[http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/](http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/)

Asus has released an updated version (C101) with USB-C:
[https://liliputing.com/2017/09/asus-chromebook-
flip-c101-hit...](https://liliputing.com/2017/09/asus-chromebook-
flip-c101-hits-us-299.html)

------
msrivas
Seems like to get any good developer use out of it you either got to root it
or run crouton. Basically get some linux on it. I used macbooks for a long
time but new one specially the 13" pro did not have the specs I was looking
for. Eventually settled for a Dell XPS developer edition. But these new
pixelbooks have an amazing build. Would love to get my hands on one but sounds
like I'd have to root it for my purposes at least.

------
marktangotango
I've been using a de-chromed acer c720 as my primary machine for a couple of
years now, I upgraded the m2 sata, wiped it, and installed xubuntu. This is a
low powered machine though, and the display barely tolerable. I use it for web
browsing and side projects using vim and scripting languages.

Sounds like the newest machines are much more capable, I would never try to do
Java development with a heavy ide like eclipse on this setup, for example.

------
bergie
I used a Chromebook Pixel as my primary dev machine for a couple of years.
Works great with either crouton or Termux for the Linux-y stuff.

Later I switched to an Android tablet: [http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-
android-2017/](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android-2017/)

I had to return the tablet when I quit my previous job, so now programming
from an iPad Pro.

~~~
vcool07
interesting, do you use an external kb ? doesn't the small screen bother you
(especially multi window IDEs) ?

~~~
bergie
I used the 11" MacBook Air for a few years, so I'm quite used to working with
small screens. Good eyesight means I can fit ton of vim splits on the screen
with a small-ish font.

Example: [https://d2vqpl3tx84ay5.cloudfront.net/android-
tablet-2017/pi...](https://d2vqpl3tx84ay5.cloudfront.net/android-
tablet-2017/pixel_c_desktop.jpg) (from the Android tablet I had before this
current iPad)

Right now I'm typing this using the Smart Keyboard from Apple, but I also have
a nice custom mechanical keyboard that I can plug in when I'm home:
[http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/atreus-build-
log/](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/atreus-build-log/)

------
vanviegen
I've been using a Samsung Chromebook Pro for the last couple of months as my
primary machine. Pretty happy with it! My needs are pretty modest though, as I
do my development work over ssh.

I do think it's awesome to be able to run progressive web apps, Android apps
and native Linux apps (using crouton and xiwi) side by side rather seamlessly.
This makes it a more versatile platform than any, IMO.

------
blikdak
For the pixelbook price I’d rather get one of these
[https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-
stealth](https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth) or
since I’m a Mac fanboy a 13” MacBook Pro, then at least I’d be sure the OS
would be updated for the next 4 or 5 years or more.

~~~
bergie
Chrome OS gets roughly that amount of years of updates as well.

~~~
jasonvorhe
Google promises support for at least 5 years after release.

------
geoffc
I recently switch from a Macbook to the Asus Chrome flipbook and am happy with
the following workflow. I enabled developer mode and installed Chromebrew,
vim, git, rsync and tmux. I git checkout my projects locally and edit in
vim/tmux and then rsync the changes to a cloud server for compilation and
testing.

------
deft
Usually yeah I do. I'm not using a super powerful one (the pixel is a massive
waste of money and always was). Just have the 4GB Acer R11. Small, good
battery life and a touchscreen.

My setup: Dev mode Chromebrew with tmux,vim,irssi,python3.6

I don't use crouton because I don't need it.

------
jasonvorhe
I work quite a lot with a Chromebook Pixel from 2013. All I need to get work
done is a VM somewhere, SSH/mosh, tmux, vim and a nice display.

I hope to be able to buy the new Pixelbook as a replacement, if it ever ships
to my country.

------
true_tuna
Yes, but I fixed the rom, installed a real ssd in it and put Ubuntu on it.
It's great and I love it.

------
ce4
previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14863580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14863580)

------
VLM
Primary laptop, yes. I have a desktop with a vastly superior mechanical
keyboard and multiple monitors, but for a primary laptop, sure.

The concept of "primary machine" is weird to me. Since the early 80s, things
keep getting separated out. NFS home directories moved bulk file storage to a
fileserver in the 80s or early 90s. I could run ALL the self tests and build
for ALL possible outputs by hand like the old days on a local machine, but
that's what the Jenkins vm is for. I could run git without any centralized
server, but no one really does that, there's a host for that. I could keep
track of bugs in email or in my head like the baddest of bad old days, but
there's a host for that. Logging for debugging is on separate hosts now a
days. I used to run my dev environment locally using lots of memory and CPU
and battery power but I've had access to a vmware cluster that weighs several
tons, I'm not carrying that kind of power around in a laptop. Since everything
has abstracted out into cloudy hosts, there's really nothing I can do with
local dev resources WRT the proverbial "what do I do in an internet outage?"
question. The answer is "same thing I'd do with my desktop, nothing, because
everything is online and cloudy today." In 1981 I could program productively
on one machine air gap isolated from every other machine on the planet, but
that was a very long time ago. There may also be inherent cultural issues, you
can and we did program in Z80 assembler in '81 on completely isolated self
hosted machines, but I'm not sure that even works culturally with modern
languages, burned right into the tools are things like automatic dependency
resolution that assume internet connectivity.

Having infinite cloud power laying around makes things weird talking with
older generation devs. Yes the Scala compiler is not fast if you run it on a
low speed battery friendly laptop cpu with 2 gigs of ram and slow spinning
rust for storage, but the vmware image I compile on has specs better than
anything you can buy today in as a laptop so I just don't care about speed.

You have to get used to some closed source weirdness, but can be worked
around. You "right click" using alt and the touchpad on my weird keyboard. The
keyboard feel is awful compared to an original model-M on my desk but it does
work. The cheapest chromebooks have ridiculous low res low dpi screens and one
with a good screen, is, as you'd expect, hundreds of dollars not $49 or
whatever the school kids get today. The vnc client still complains about
security every time I use it as if I'll respond on the 35194th complaint. The
SSH client UI is like a weird re-interpretation of putty which is initially
weird.

On the other hand, its never crashed or failed in any way not designed into
it, OS security and maint patching isn't an issue, the boot time is a couple
seconds so I don't bother with sleep mode, the battery really does last ten
hours while it weighs practically nothing. It just works as an appliance which
is very unusual for general purpose computer use.

Most chromebook solutions are multistep which makes it either impossible to
use or trivial to use depending on your mindset and past experience. How to
program an arduino on a chromebook? Well, that's impossible in one step there
is no one click arduino IDE installer on the google play store, but absolutely
trivial in multiple steps. Setting up a VNC client on a chromebook is trivial.
Setting up VNC server on a dirt cheap pi and accessing it via the network is
trivial. Setting up arduino ide on a pi is trivial. So its both impossible to
program an arduino using a chromebook in one step, and its also four
unimaginably trivial steps to accomplish. So using "windows monolithic
thinking" many things are simply impossible on the chromebook and will forever
be impossible as long as you demand one click solutions, while "unix small
optimized tools thinking" means everything is possible, even trivial, on a
chromebook. Chromebooks have acceptable individual tools that can be strung
together unix-like to do anything, but there are very few swiss army multi-
tool giant monolithic one click solutions. You can't one click install visual
studio locally, but you can trivially VNC into a giant overpowered vmware
image running emacs connected to cloudy fileserver and jenkins and gitlab and
things...

