
ASK HN: Has anyone adopted Chrome OS as their primary OS? - scorpion032
I&#x27;m in the market for a new device (and also an OS), having used exclusively Mac OS for the most of last decade.<p>Recently I used Chrome OS, in break time, and I like the simplicity. I&#x27;m wondering and interested to know if Cloud9, EC2 and such platforms kind of enable remote development well enough?<p>Specifically, mostly interested in how it would work out for web-development and Data Science.
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jrockway
I used Chrome OS as my primary OS when I worked at Google. I didn't really
like screwing around with the Linux desktop, so I just used a Chrome OS
desktop as an interface onto a more powerful Linux box. All I really use are a
terminal and a browser, so it worked fine. It never did anything that annoyed
me; it just stayed out of my way and I could get my work done without
annoyance. It also solved the problem I've always had with laptops; they are
never configured the same as my desktop so it's jarring to switch to one (for
travel, meetings, etc.) With Chrome OS, that was never a problem, all my
settings sync'd perfectly between my two desktops (home/work) and laptop.

These days I use an iPad Pro as my laptop and it's not as good, mostly because
even when iOS is connected to a 4k monitor, Safari tells the remote website
"hey, send me your shittiest mobile site please". Apple should really make the
iPad Pro browser tell things it's a desktop.

~~~
maccio92
> With Chrome OS, that was never a problem, all my settings sync'd perfectly
> between my two desktops (home/work) and laptop

did these two desktops also use Chrome OS? This sounds pretty nice

~~~
forgot-my-pw
Non-chrome OS: It syncs your Chrome browser settings (bookmarks, credentials,
etc).

On other Chrome OS: It syncs your Chrome browser + the OS settings.

------
InTheArena
I've tried but failed. There are a couple of key issues: 1) The first is that
the chromebook that I purchased before the Crostini announcement (Asus
C302CA), which was very much a flagship laptop remains unsupported. The
wonderful software update hell of the google ecosystem bit me here.

2) I do a lot of work on airplanes, so not everything can run on a cloud
instance. Apple cost too much (and has a remarkable lack of native apps for
things like netflix). I also need it to fit on a airplane without jamming my
elbows into my sternum due to size. The Chromebook has the form factor, but
not the flexibility to work when the net is spotty(again, Crostini probably
helps this out).

What I ended up doing ironically was a Surface Go. Great keyboard, nice form
factor, and WSL support. 8GB of RAM (which is really needed by notebooks) and
it works on plane.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
I don't understand the appeal of cloud only/mostly computing for non-trivial
use cases. It's probably that I care a lot more about Internet hiccups getting
in my way than most. To me it'd be like having a smartphone that only unlocks
when there's a signal.

~~~
cyberpip
FWIW, it will unlock when there is no signal. I unlock mine with my phone
using Smart Lock
([https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6160273?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6160273?hl=en)).

------
cyberpip
Chrome OS is okay but typically leaves me wishing I had a more flexible
system. Sure, you can install Linux apps on some models (not my Samsung
Chromebook Pro because of the old kernel it shipped with!), or flip the
developer switch, but I'd hate for this to be my main system. They're making
strides with every release but given Google's track record with support and
listening to community feedback, I probably wouldn't purchase another (though
maybe a sub $200 "disposable" model?). They also EoL these things so one day
it will be frozen in time and your only option will be to flip the developer
switch which warns you on every boot that you're in developer mode, though
there may be a way to remove that with hardware a hardware modification. There
is some chatter on the product forums about enabling "unknown source"
installations on ChromeOS, but it's been open for years now and progress is
slow on that front. I'd only suggest it as a supplemental system, not a main
one. A used Thinkpad can run Chrome.

------
hutzlibu
Not really primary OS and probably never will be, but primary for my Laptop
which I use a lot.

Main reason is good driver support out of the box. Also not perfect(trouble
with sd-cards, that can cause freezes), but my ASUS C213 runs very smoothly
and long compared to my other laptops and it is sturdy and not expensive.
Perfect for working while traveling ...

But ChromeOS itself ... is quite horrible. You feel cripled anytime you want
to do more than Surfing and basic writing.

With the developer switch and some pain, I could set up my work enviroment
with node and chrome dev tools and now that works pretty good, but every time
I am forced to use that joke of a file browser I get annoyed.

But once linux apps will be fully supported (stable and gpu accelerated),
things might get interesting. But I still hate beeing limited and restricted
in many ways. I like to fully tweak my system to my taste. It is Linux
underneath but different. And not very well documented.

You want to change key-binding or just want to invoke a shutdown after a long
script finished? Or ... dare to create new logins(without google-connection)?

Good luck, I gave up on that.

------
jfsantos
I've used a Chrome OS device for a long time as my primary device. I'm a
researcher and never do any "real" development besides some web stuff or
writing code locally, though (most of my code runs on clusters). However,
using just web stuff like Cloud9 was not for me, so one of the first things I
did with my Chromebook was to install crouton.

If you need to run any specific stuff locally, get a Chromebook that has an
Intel CPU, not an ARM. Some stuff (especially proprietary binaries) are not
available for ARM. If you get a device with a touchscreen, Android apps
sometime will be good enough for things that do not work well on Linux (e.g.
Skype).

------
towaway1138
I did for a number of years, mainly as an SSH client, and for web-based stuff.
The automatic OS updates are great.

A noted limitation is that there's no good X11 story. The new Linux subsystem
looks very interesting, but it only works on some hardware, and you'll have to
do heavy research before buying to figure out if your new Chromebook works.

All that said, I'm thinking of moving away from it. Using Chromebooks for
everything requires trusting Google a _lot_ , and because of their various
recent behaviors, I'm willing to do that less and less these days.

------
open-source-ux
It may or may not be important to you, but Chrome OS is a 'cloud-based'
operating system (OS) which means everything you do in the OS is tracked and
recorded by Google. This has important privacy implications. Although you can
use Chrome OS with a guest account, to take full advantage of the OS reqires
you login with your Google account.

Your Google account (containing your personal details such as your location
and date of birth) is now tied to all your activity in the OS. Even if that
data is 'anonymised' (a pretty meaningless term) or aggregated with other user
data, this is a colossus sweep of user data on an industrial scale.

I presume all the people who are happy to use Chrome OS would also be happy to
sign-in to Windows/Ubuntu/Mac OS with a personally-identifying account and
have everything they do recorded and tracked by those operating systems?

------
chuhnk
After my macbook pro keyboard became completely unusable and keys literally
started to fall off I went out and bought a Pixelbook and handed my Macbook in
for repair. I'll tell you right now, I'll never go back and I immediately
understood that Apple are truly screwed. The macbook is dead and they don't
even know it. All developers will eventually move to a Chromebook, Surface or
whatever else.

Chrome OS for me is perfect, especially since they introduced linux support
and android apps. I can run anything I need, I do not feel like I took a step
back, in fact I feel like I leaped forward by pushing towards a cloud first
experience. I was already using Google for all my apps, spend most of my time
in the browser and I personally have not felt any pain beyond adjusting to my
new keyboard layout.

I highly recommend everyone ditch their macbooks and buy a Pixelbook.

~~~
Wavelets
Honest question here: Do you have any concerns regarding privacy?

------
syntaxing
It really depends on why you need your computer. I have an Asus CA302 and it
works great for most of my usage like watching Netflix and browsing the web.
But for any coding, I explicitly use my Thinkpad X62 that's running Ubuntu and
it works flawlessly. If you're willing to pay for Cloud9 or EC2, I think
you're better off buying an ultraportable gaming laptop like a MSI running
Ubuntu, but they are much more expensive. If GPU isn't a requirement, a
Thinkpad T-series is the way to go.

------
IvanK_net
I remember when Microsoft was fined for not offering other browsers to users:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/06/microsoft...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/06/microsoft-
fined-browser-error) . Chrome OS can not even install other borwsers by
default, and it seems like nobody cares :/

~~~
simonh
That laws suit was crazy. Every other competing OS came with a browser, and
how are you even going to download a third party browser, if the OS doesn't
come with a client you can use to download it with? The 'browser selection
dialog' was just Bonkers. What if I wanted one that wasn't in the court-
approved list?

I need MS to install IE, so I can use it to go and get IceWeasel, or whatever.
Leave them alone!

~~~
cdh
> how are you even going to download a third party browser, if the OS doesn't
> come with a client you can use to download it with?

Software was distributed offline as well. It seems like a long time ago now,
but there was no shortage of AOL installation discs at the time.

(In fact, I believe both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were
distributed on floppy disks at one point, although that would have been long
before the antitrust case.)

~~~
simonh
2001 was at an inflection point where it was very rapidly becoming clear that
argument was archaic. In any case, the fact that everyone else was giving away
browsers for free is hardly a great argument that Microsoft should be
prevented distributing it for free also, and if they can why not let them
bundle it?

The world of 2001 was very rapidly becoming the connected world we're in now,
and imposing a restriction on anyone like that now would just seem ludicrous
and in fact user hostile, as it was. To me and I think anyone else paying
attention back then, that was very obvious.

------
mntmoss
The main downside of using any of the smaller/cheaper devices is in the I/O
capabilities, which manifest both in the software and the hardware. With the
hardware it's pretty obvious - a lot of Chromebooks are like phones and only
have one or two USB ports. With the software, it's more like the sandboxing
perpetually getting in the way of you doing things locally. Chromebooks are
more flexible than Android devices in that you have the possibility of getting
a full Linux environment, but the little issues will still arise now and then
- and if you're on ARM, a lot of Linux software just will not be made for you.

If your workflow is just remote access with SSH and an occasional Web site, a
smartphone or tablet can already do the job. Just deck it out with
peripherals, a stand, etc. You can get very, very far with remote access. But
for a full local development environment, especially if it involves graphics,
there's a tendency to depend on a "desktop x86" stack that tends to creep in
no matter what you do.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Several Chromebooks now support Linux apps, so in theory you could have all
the proper coding tools you need without relying on a Cloud IDE.

------
turtlebits
I bought a Pixelbook when it was $300 off last year and was pleasantly
surprised at how great of a laptop it is. It's now my primary personal use
laptop. For consumption/light dev work, I greatly prefer it over Mac/Windows

With crostini, I can do local dev (python, js, golang) 90% as well as I can on
a full fledged OS, without having to rely on cloud IDEs, etc.

------
taude
I'm interested in responses here. I'd like to get a lightwight laptop, similar
to my 11" Mac Book Air. I don't feel like I want to pay Apple prices for a
second "travel" machine.

I would like to be able to run Emacs on it. It doesn't have to be full blown
dev machine, but I'd like some of my simple tooling, and backup to cloud
storage to share with my main work machines.

I currently using an iPad with a Brydge keyboard attached (I paid $350 for the
setup, ipad on sale for $250 + $99 keyboard), which I love, but I don't have
native Emacs and some other stuff, so I'm actually looking at a Chromebook. I
think I could do most stuff with native Android apps and the web browser. I'd
still like to figure out the Emacs/lightweight development type of thing. I've
tried some of the online tooling like repl.it, but have a hard time with the
portable keyboard bindings...

~~~
laken
The Inspiron 11 from Dell might be what you're looking for -- you can get it
with either Windows or Chrome OS, and it often has models that are under $200.
It's not a bad machine for the price, and it's a really nice mini form factor
for travel.

~~~
taude
I just took a look. I actually don't mind spending $500 to get something in a
little bit better form factor and a much better screen. Something like those
Samsung Chromebook Pros are what I'm eying up.

~~~
cyberpip
The Samsung Chromebook Pro form factor is nice but did ship with an older
kernel, which is preventing them from enabling Linux app support. You should
be able to find one around $400ish though.

------
williamstein
I have adopted Chrome OS as my primary OS. I started doing so with a
Chromebook Pixel in 2013, which I used when writing the first version of
[https://CoCalc.com](https://CoCalc.com). I ended up switching to running full
Linux on it, since Chrome OS was too limiting then. After a year I switched to
using various Mac laptops. However, ALL of my Mac laptops broke due to
keyboard failures, and modern mac keyboards have a feel that sucks for me
personally. I switched to an iPad pro 10.5" for a few months, as an experiment
in pain (but also freedom, since it is so small and light). Over a year ago, I
bought a Google Pixelbook, and switch to it as my primary OS. Since I'm the
lead developer of [https://cocalc.com](https://cocalc.com), what I do under
Chrome OS is web development (literally, of cocalc.com, which is all done
within cocalc.com), data science (which is what cocalc.com is for), and email
(via gmail). I use crouton so I can easily get a local root shell and use
encrypted USB drives (for offsite backups), and I Crostini so I can run Docker
containers, e.g., so I can do offline work with the CoCalc codebase and use
local X11 applications like Inkscape.

The biggest surprise for me was that I bought a $450 14" HP x360 chromebook
for a booth at a tradeshow, and I've been using _that_ chromebook as my main
laptop for the last few months, instead of my 16GB top-end Pixelbook. Why? The
larger 16:9 screen is way better for coding (for me), and the keyboard is
amazingly for me (I consider it much better than the pixelbook keyboard). This
HP chromebook weighs a pound more than the pixelbook, but I'm not carrying it
around that much so it doesn't matter. Also, it's nice when I do carry it
around knowing that it cost $450 instead of $1599, so if it is stolen or
damaged, it is much less of a loss.

Conclusion: I've been using ChromeOS as my primary OS off and on since 2013,
and I'm impressed with how ChromeOS (and the Chromebook ecosystem) have
improved over the years. And I'm very surprised, because today I choose a $450
Chromebook over a $2000 Apple laptop, whereas from 2007 to 20017, I would
choose the Apple laptop. Also, for me, everything is a company (or university
purchase), so even though "money is no object", I still prefer the relatively
cheap Chromebook.

Another, thing -- my old Chromebook Pixel had LTE data, since it always had
internet. My iPad pro also did. However, with modern tethering (I have a Pixel
2 XL), a phone provides perfectly good tethering --there's no need to have it
built into your laptop.

------
swixmix
I use ChromeOS with a chromebook. It works fine but it's not a convenient
swiss army knife.

For example: To use 'adb' to connect to my phone I know of three options. 1
Use Chrome but that is extremely limited to web. 2 Activate developer mode and
upgrade adb to current. Or 3 Connect to another device like rpi.

I chose to activate developer mode for convenience. I run OpenBSD via qemu for
a decent CLI. I keep a loopback ethernet cable and proxy settings to fool
ChromeOS into letting me use alternate network set ups.

~~~
csytan
Are there any disadvantages to choosing developer mode?

~~~
swixmix
It's no longer a safe and supported system. (Opposite of what I really want.)

Also the nag screen on reboot is alarmingly bright and, i think, just gives
directions to disable developer mode.

Always backup your files if you use developer mode.

Always backup your files if you use the linux system.

Always backup your files.

------
imaffett
I got an Acer C720A 5 years ago and tried to do that. I sideloaded linux on an
SD card. I was able to do web dev and hybrid app development (I worked for
Intel at the time). It worked fine for what I needed.

I got my wife a Samsung Chromebook 3 and she uses it for her job as preschool
director. Being able to install Android apps is great. I feel like I could use
that machine for most of my personal projects. I would NOT use a remote
development tool; try to do it all locally when you can.

------
malcolmwhite
My main device is a cheap Acer Chromebook, and I also have a low-end Mac mini.
I've done a lot of development on the Chromebook using Remote Desktop to drive
the mini. If you're looking for a flexible and affordable setup, it's hard to
beat.

Originally I expected to write code directly on the Chromebook using Crostini
(edit: Crouton), but it required a lot of hand-holding. I eventually gave up.
But that was years ago, so maybe they've smoothed out the edges.

~~~
Filligree
Crostini hasn't existed for years, and it's still in beta. Are you sure you
don't mean Crouton?

In any case, Crostini has gotten much better since last year -- but the
chromebook itself is too underpowered compared to a desktop to make a good
experience. This is even true for the Pixelbook.

Crostini also seems to have problems with storage; the filesystem constantly
soft-locks, for seconds at a time, under any appreciable load. This might be
because they use Btrfs.

~~~
malcolmwhite
You're right, I was thinking Crouton.

------
cobookman
I'm using chromeos as my primary computer. However I also have a Linux
workstation at my desk.

So chromeos is more my mobile/meeting computer.

------
the_librarian
My fiance has on her laptop, but definitely not me as she is usually saying
how slow it is and all she does is browse the internet.

------
antoineMoPa
My quite old Chromebook is my main laptop for university. I have Python +
Latex + Gcc on it and live with ~ 500 spare megabytes...

When I code, I generally do it with Emacs in crouton, not with a remote IDE
like Cloud9.

New Chromebooks are even better for development because they support docker,
but I can't test it with my "too old" Chromebook.

------
wayneftw
I got a Chromebook for my wife and she is able to use it for many things, but
she still has to use Chrome Remote Desktop to get back to her Windows PC to
get files that she didn't move to the cloud yet (most of them). For her kind
of work, a third grade teacher, she could probably get away with Chrome OS
forever. Some of the apps she uses on iOS weren't available though.

Before I gave her the Chromebook, I set it up for myself to try it out. After
updating it (an Acer Chromebook 14), I was able to install Android apps which
all ran pretty well. I also installed Sublime Text and VS Code in developer
mode. Sublime ran much faster, but they both had issues compared to my nice
fat PC. However, Chrome Remote Desktop works well enough that I could have
just used the Chromebook as a remote screen for my PC. I don't think I could
ever bring myself to use Chrome OS as my primary OS though...ever. It's too
limited.

So, I switched to Manjaro Linux with XFCE for all of my web development and
other work needs last year. I highly recommend it! (Before that I was mostly
on Windows and sometimes on Mac.) I installed it on an Acer E5-575G and I got
everything working including precision touchpad gestures which perform just as
well as on any Macbook (I own a Mac Pro and also a Macbook Pro for
comparison). It took some work to get the touchpad configured correctly, but
not much. Then I got a 2nd PC workstation (a refurbished i7 desktop from
Amazon for like $400) and I put a new 500GB ssd with Manjaro on that...
Honestly, it's great. All the development tools that I need just work and
there is plenty of software for Arch/Manjaro. I'll probably never go back to
Mac or Windows for work, despite the fact that Manjaro updates have twice
caused me a minor setback which were solved easily with help from threads like
this - [https://forum.manjaro.org/t/19-february-2019-system-
update-i...](https://forum.manjaro.org/t/19-february-2019-system-update-
issues-which-i-encountered/76257) (No big deal - I've had similar scares from
Windows and Mac updates over the years.)

A Linux desktop is the only desktop OS that makes me feel like a kid again.
The reasons I failed at moving to a Linux desktop before were because things
broke all the time or required hella work just to get the proper drivers...or
becuase I didn't like UI (on Ubuntu for instance), etc - but Manjaro with XFCE
was a breeze and changed all that for me. I'm so glad I decided to try it out.
I only ever tried Gnome or KDE before that.

------
pjmlp
I don't see any value on them versus a full blown OS.

In fact they hardly took over outside the US school system.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/desktop/worldwide/](http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/desktop/worldwide/)

------
AtHeartEngineer
I tried for a couple months with the pixelbook...I couldn't do it. I ended up
getting the surface book 2, and while I'd much prefer Linux for development,
windows is far better than chrome for doing anything development-wise.

------
bergie
I used a ChromeBook as my primary machine for several years. Nice machines,
and you can do Linux things when needed (back then, developer mode and
crouton, now I guess the better-supported crostini).

Later I switched to working on a tablet instead.

------
actionowl
I really wish there was an official build of chromeos for virtualbox, it's
ideal for a virtual appliance. There is one company that has a build for
vmware but I don't use VMWare and it only has a 30day trial IIRC.

------
sosodev
I've went the opposite direction. I flashed my Chromebook's bios so I could
actually install Linux.

------
mobilio
Acer C720P user here. Works flawless... but not for dev.

So i enable dev mode then installed Ubuntu in a chroot.

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70122-_6
the main issue was the hard_drive space, ymmv.

[https://youtu.be/-jOHHyJMgWk](https://youtu.be/-jOHHyJMgWk)

