

Using the Google Cr-48 for Coding - adamhowell
http://ejohn.org/blog/google-cr-48-for-coding/

======
ukdm
Useful comment posted from Chrome team member Jen:

 _I’m a Chrome team member and saw this going around Twitter.

Just wanted to say, you can right-click on the Cr-48 by tapping with two
fingers (or holding Alt and single clicking).

You can also flip the developer mode switch under the device and get full
access to a shell: <http://www.chromium.org/poking-around-your-chrome-os-
device>

hope this resolves some of the comments!_

~~~
jlees
That was me. Happy to answer further questions here, though I don't want to
turn HN into Reddit.

(No, I'm afraid I don't know when or if you're going to get one.)

~~~
RexRollman
Does Chrome OS use X11 at all? If so, is there a window manager or is Chrome
itself serving that function?

~~~
jlees
There is a window manager. You can dig into the code via chromium.org if you
want to understand the details :)

------
CWIZO
Keep in mind, while reading this, that the Cr-48 is a beta product of sorts.
So the mentioned hardware faults will most likely be fixed when this thing
actually ships.

Somewhat unrelated:

 _Right now my ideal laptop would be: Take a 13″ Macbook Pro, replace the HD
with an SSD, replace the DVD drive with more battery, add 3G._

I couldn't agree more, that really would be a perfect laptop.

~~~
jasonjei
I'm extremely happy with my 13" MacBook Air and its 7 hour battery life.
Chances are, I'll be tired of looking at my laptop before I'll encounter a
situation where I run out of juice, and I have my iPad to tether, even though
not technically allowed...

~~~
pmjordan
There's a Trekstor Portable 3G/HSPA Wifi router (a Rebranded Huawei E5) on its
way to me right now. Lack of built-in 3G in the Macbook Air is a little
annoying - I'd prefer it over the SD card slot - but this little router should
do the trick. Dragging an iPad around together with an Air just for the 3G
seems a little over the top. :-) An iPhone 3GS or 4 with bluetooth tethering
would be OK I suppose; my 3G's modem is annoyingly slow (384kbit/s) due to
lack os HSPA support.

------
poet
_The other day I saw the announcement for the new Chrome OS test laptop and
decided to sign up on the off-chance that I might be able to snag one....
Surprisingly the laptop arrived this morning and I’ve been having fun putting
it through its paces._

Oh stop being humble. :P I don't think it's surprising in the least that the
creator of JQuery was able to snag a Cr-48. ;)

~~~
shawndumas
Nor is it inappropriate.

------
junkbit
If you run "Shell In A Box" on the server you can browse to a full bash prompt
in a browser tab. It even has Tab-completion and works with ncurses apps too.

You just run a tiny daemon and then connect to it such as
<https://192.168.1.1:4200>

<http://code.google.com/p/shellinabox/>

~~~
crabman
172.16.1.199:22

------
Groxx
Basic summary:

Respectable battery life, a poor terminal, and an infuriating trackpad. And
John Resig is spoiled from owning a Mac.

Battery life is good to hear, terminal strikes me as "fail" (seriously.
Developer mode. It should be as developer-friendly as possible, no? _That
means a good terminal application_.), trackpad could be fixed through
software, and who isn't (who has one)? [edit: correction: there's a non-
developer-mode terminal, which is this one. Developer mode has SSH key
abilities & others]

Not _too_ surprising, given that this is an early-release test. But in that
way it's similar to many other Google products; first version is crap but
interesting enough to use, and in time (if not dropped) it tends to take over
_everything_ because it gets better and better. It seems to me this might take
off whenever they put out offline versions of GMail and Docs. Until then, it's
of limited (though interesting) use and most definitely not for everyone.

~~~
jeresig
I've since been able to flip over into developer mode (you have to toggle a
physical switch to enable it). It gives you a proper shell (which allows you
to install an SSH key) but beyond that there doesn't seem to be much else that
you can do (it's not obvious to me how you would install a package or compile
code).

~~~
Groxx
Good to know, SSH keys are _essential_ to a lot of people. Seems strange that
the "normal" terminal doesn't support them, though...

Thanks for the write-up! I found it useful :)

edit: a thought: mind trying `compgen -abc` at the terminal? Idea came from:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/948008/linux-command-
to-l...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/948008/linux-command-to-list-all-
available-commands-and-aliases)

~~~
mbreese
I'm guessing that the lack of proper ssh key support is part of the desire to
have nothing permanent on the device. Since one of the security aspects is to
make it so that if you lose the machine, you have no risk of compromising your
information. Having your private key stored on the machine kind of defeats
that purpose.

That being said: when I was playing with dev builds on my netbook last year,
the first thing I did was put my private key on it.

~~~
Groxx
That's a very good point, I hadn't thought of it from that perspective.

Though you _could_ refer to SSH keys which are on a USB drive, fully
protecting your info if your laptop is lost (as long as your drive wasn't
plugged in)...

------
Raphael

        I wanted to quickly crunch some numbers and went looking 
        for a calculator. Surprisingly there wasn’t one in the 
        store. I ended up having to use the JavaScript console to 
        do the calculations – which, I suspect, is not what 
        Google expects most users to do.
    

But Google Search is a calculator!

~~~
zandor
And Wolfram Alpha.

------
nagnatron
After seeing those large ALT and CTRL keys, looking down on my Thinkpad's
keyboard and seeing FN|CTRL|WIN|ALT makes me sad.

------
sayrer
This seems like what to expect at this stage. Something to dismiss as a toy
because you can't create anything serious on it... yet.

There has to be a reason Google is bundling Flash on this thing, and I bet the
reason is not that Google thinks Flash is so awesome. That has to be the first
part of a trade with Adobe.

I guess we'll find out how photoshop.com with NaCL plugins works out. :)

~~~
kj12345
Pitted against Chrome, Flash supports webcams, microphones, cross-domain
requests, DRM on video/audio, and a certain amount of multithreading through
Pixel Bender. Plus (and this is huge) a designer-friendly content creation
tool. HTML5 is gaining fast, but there are still some legitimate advantages
for Flash.

~~~
Sephr
HTML5 has every one of those features (DRM not so much, though it's possible
with binary XHR Blob buffers, but there's no point to do that as users could
easily steal video data from the decoded output canvas).

Webcams and microphones can be accessed via the HTML5 <device> API, cross-
domain requests can be done with HTTP Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS),
which is arguably much nicer than Flash's cross-origin policy XML file
solution, and multithreading can be done with web workers.

~~~
kj12345
Cool, didn't know CORS was implemented so widely, and its true about
WebWorkers. But Chrome doesn't support <device> yet, or DRM. (I only mention
DRM since the Youtube team says its one reason they can't fully move off
Flash).

~~~
Sephr
I thought the only reason YouTube hasn't isn't fully supporting HTML5 was ads.
Afaik, YouTube doesn't use any DRM whatsoever.

~~~
kj12345
Apparently they use it for movies and other proprietary content:

<http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html>

------
Timothee
"The other day I saw the announcement for the new Chrome OS test laptop and
decided to sign up on the off-chance that I might be able to snag one."

I would think that someone as high profile as John Resig could get one pretty
easily. (actually he did! I mean without filling out the same form as "normal"
people) Maybe it shows that he's too humble to ask for one directly...

------
al_james
" I’d love to be able to have access to a shell and the ability to install vim
+ screen + git + a web server"

I can't help thinking thats beside the point and exactly what google are not
designing this for.

~~~
pyre
I think that point is that, like with the iPhone, people want the ability to
'flip a switch' to be able to go beyond the 'canned' experience. Apple wants
to force you to only stay within the canned experience, but I would expect a
little more from Google. Sure it's not what they are designing it for, but I
don't necessarily think that people are expecting support for these actions
from Google.

------
mian2zi3
When the first Cr-48 reviews popped up, I had exactly this question: "What
kind of setup would you want for development?" (Or maybe writing papers in
TeX.) ymacs seems like a good start for a web-based editor, but it is useless
without filesystem support (C-x C-f directly to Dropbox?) Without ssh'ing into
a home box somewhere, I'm not sure what the cloud-based compile/execute/debug
development model is supposed to be.

Any other ideas what development should look like in the idea cloud-based
world?

------
stcredzero
_Take a 13″ Macbook Pro, replace the HD with an SSD, replace the DVD drive
with more battery, add 3G. I would use that laptop until the end of time._

I just replaced the HD on my 13" Macbook with an SSD, but I haven't seen
anything about replacing the DVD with a battery. I do have an external laptop
battery with a home made magsafe connector and a portable 4G hotspot. I
suspect that this setup is only going to last about a year or so longer,
though.

~~~
icegreentea
You cannot replace the optical with battery on MBPs. I know older Thinkpads
had that ability, but I haven't checked any of the new ones. Regardless,
Lenovo seems to be dropping all the funky/awesome Thinkpad accessories from
their site.

~~~
shimon
You can still do this with many of the newest Thinkpads. They call it the
"Ultrabay". Example:
[http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...](http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=57Y4536&current-
category-id=4364BD0F20B94413B5AD6E684D2848E9&&hide_menu_area=yes)

------
rwhitman
As someone who spends a lot of time doing UI dev work, I need to open up
photoshop and cut up PSDs into CSS quite a bit..

The ability to run a terminal and local PHP or Django are also biggies, but
other than that I don't need much of an OS. Everything else I use on a day to
day basis is cloud based anyhow

Eagerly awaiting the day I can break free of the desktop os for good

------
webXL
Still waiting for mine. I knew I should have used John Resig as my alias!

Too bad about the terminal and *nix tools. I guess I'll have to use something
like Cloud9 IDE to code. I'm really looking forward to the free 3g, though.
That and the old black macbook feel.

------
trickjarrett
I love the idea of mapping caps lock to ctrl + t to make it a new tab button
my normal boring laptop. I'm currently looking for an app which will allow
that, or a Chrome extension which allows this - anyone have an idea?

~~~
Huppie
On windows you could use Autohotkey to do just that. I'm about to do that just
now ;-)

------
brown9-2
Is Google re-selling the 3G service from another carrier? Didn't realize they
were getting into the wireless provider business with this.

~~~
jlees
The 3G is provided by Verizon on this device.

------
RexRollman
Although I appreciate Google's efforts to provide it, I am NOT a fan of Flash.
Is the a way to turn it off in Chrome OS?

~~~
arhughes
I believe you can disable it in about:plugins

~~~
RexRollman
Thanks!

------
spektom
How do you verify that your code behaves correctly in different browsers when
developing in JavaScript on Chrome OS?

~~~
modality
Unit tests! :)

------
bitwize
tl;dr i want a macbook air and this isn't it

------
nikster
Does Eclipse run on Chrome? No Eclipse, no coding...

------
wccrawford
Wow. Lack of SSH niceties like keys must be painful.

