

Chromebook Developer Setup Guide - afaqurk
http://afaqdar.blogspot.com/2013/10/5-different-chromebook-developer-setups.html

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bluedino
What are the odds of programs like SublimeText being able to run on ARM in the
near future? I'm sure Eclipse would be far too heavy.

Most of the 'Chromebook as a developer laptop' make it into a fancy SSH
terminal - which is fine. But I don't really see a 'terminal' as a 'developer
laptop'. I understand you can still access the internals of Linux along with
the shell and other languages, but it doesn't work for a lot of people when
you can't use the same apps/devices as you can on a your 'normal' machine.

A $999 XPS 13 or MacBook Air looks pretty inviting, even at 3X the price of a
$299 Chromebook when you realize how much productivity gain there is when you
don't have to dink around with the OS and aren't limited in your app
selection.

~~~
Cowen
With crouton, there are very few Linux apps that you can't run on a
Chromebook. While I haven't tried it with SublimeText, I have run Eclipse on
my Chromebook. It's not the smoothest experience, but it can get the job done.

So far, Arduino and IntelliJ are the only apps that I haven't gotten working
on my Chromebook. The former relies on some x86 libraries that obviously won't
work on an ARM processor, and the latter prefers the Oracle JVM which is just
too much of a pain for me to set up when OpenJDK and Eclipse work well enough.
I've also had some issues with my VPN (IPSec Xauth PSK).

I probably wouldn't recommend a Chromebook as a full time development machine,
but it can certainly be done better than just a fancy SSH terminal. It's
served me well enough when I've needed to work on the road. It's the best
traveling laptop I've ever owned.

~~~
bebna
Android Studio, who is based on IntelliJ, didn't like the fact that I was
running OpenJDK on my notebook but it worked. You should probably check on
IntelliJ again.

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ChikkaChiChi
Chromebook Pixels continue to drop in price on EBay and they are an absolute
STEAL if you are willing to put in the work.

The hardware presentation is better than my rMBP 15. I just don't like having
to jump through hoops to get it to do what I want.

They could have sold a lot more had it had a native Linux option OOB.

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AdmiralAsshat
Since I primarily work with C, SQL, or Python, Chromebook and crouton has
worked just fine as a development machine. The only drawback has been that I
can't seem to natively get the terminal to support more than 16 colors, which
makes vim look rather bland. I can enable the full 256 for use with the
solarized settings if I use tmux (tmuxing to your localhost is rather strange,
admittedly), but the lack of scrolling on tmux sessions is a little annoying.

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pekk
While this is probably very helpful to Chromebook owners, it doesn't make me
want to use a Chromebook for development, or understand the choice.

If the hardware is particularly good (is it?), why doesn't someone make it
easier to just straight up run Linux from the hard drive? I mean no weird
scripts, SD cards, etc. but just a proper distro like Debian.

~~~
Touche
> If the hardware is particularly good (is it?),

With the exception of the Pixel the advantage of most Chromebooks is that they
are cheap and fairly nice in terms of portability.

> why doesn't someone make it easier to just straight up run Linux from the
> hard drive? I mean no weird scripts, SD cards, etc. but just a proper distro
> like Debian.

That's what Crouton does for you.

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gum_ina_package
If Google came out with a 13" Chromebook for around the same price, I'd buy
that in a heartbeat. The 11" version is just too darn small for my beefy
hands.

~~~
Touche
HP is coming out with 14" Haswell Chromebooks next month that look fairly
nice. Usual HP caution applies.

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lnanek2
Interesting that there are ways to keep Chrome OS around. Most developers I
know using one just go pure Ubuntu and don't care at all about keeping Chrome
OS as a dual boot option or whatever.

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amerkhalid
I have been using original Samsung Chromebook for PHP work. All I really need
is browser based ide like ShiftEdit and ssh access. This is my setup:
[http://amerkhalid.com/php-programming-on-
chromebook/](http://amerkhalid.com/php-programming-on-chromebook/)

I miss debugger when developing on Chromebook but everything else seems to
just work.

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bsimpson
I've got my install documented (and scripted) here:

[https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev](https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev)

It uses crouton to setup a bare minimum dev environment, using Sublime as the
editor. It's designed for people who use ChromeOS for most things, but want a
good text editor on top of that.

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dogber1
If you get around replacing chrome OS with linux and reflashing the firmware
with uboot, you'll lose GPU acceleration (3D and 2D). ARM is pretty shitty
about releasing specs for their GPUs, so the Chromebook GPU (Mali T604)
remains unused.

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bestdayever
I think the thing that has always held me back from finally pulling the
trigger on A chromebook pixel is the fact that you have to dismiss the
"developer mode" popup everytime you boot. I guess that is a bit of a nitpick
though and it otherwise seems like a solid machine.

~~~
woebtz
I don't get it. If Linux or Windows is the end goal, why not start with a
Surface Pro (2)?

The startup popup is annoying, but that's at most a one-off per day. It's the
pixel's trackpad, mushy keyboard, and weak screen hinge that turns me off from
using it as a dev machine.

It's great for couch surfing or as an ipad replacement, but I expect a dev
machine to be more than a screen and a cheap price.

~~~
peatmoss
How's Linux on the surface pro? I'm worried that it'll be a device driver
scavenger hunt.

