Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

droid-life.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 183 posts

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#101

Post by bubblethink »

criddell wrote: post #100
bubblethink wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're paying a premium for good linux and coreboot support. A macbook isn't that unique, and quite a sink of money since it can't run any other OS too well. It certainly can't run linux, and windows isn't too good either. A good linux laptop that ships with coreboot is rare. You can also run windows on these things generally.

What do you mean a Macbook can't run Linux? macOS is a Unix. As for Windows it works great in either a VM or dual boot. I know people that have bought a Mac because they can (legally) run more software than any other computer.

None of the macbooks made in the last couple of years or so can run linux. People are hacking/reverse engineering things here and there. It may eventually become usable, but it would likely be obsolete by then. Here's a good summary:

https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

Edit: Also the unix certification doesn't really mean anything as far as h/w support and free drivers go.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#102

Post by gangstead »

disconnected wrote: post #36
coldtea wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those that value what the Chromebook offers over what a regular laptop with Linux does. For many also $1099 is spare change -- at least when considering what computer they can buy.

And what, exactly, does a Chromebook offer? Take this $1K device. Hardware-wise, for that kind of price you can get a nice laptop. Heck, for $200 extra, you can even get a MacBook pro if you wanted. Software wise, the value proposition looks even worse. Apple can justify that price tag because you are buying into the Mac ecosystem. Windows laptops can justify the price tag because, well, Windows is what people expect…

I think you are confusing the benefits of Chromebooks in general with Google's Pixel Chromebooks. Aside from the Pixel line of > $1k Chromebooks are usually $150-$300 with a couple "premium" $500 models.

Chromebook's being tied to Google's services is a great feature for the easily replaceable vast majority of Chromebooks that are given to students, grandparents, children. They turn on in seconds and take basically zero management. Every time I open my wife's mac there are 5 updates waiting to install because she can't be bothered to click on the notification.

I take the Pixelbook (and earlier Chromebook Pixels) to be Google's attempt to do what people are criticizing Apple of forgetting to do: remember the power users. They don't plan to sell many of them but they want the option to be out there for a developer who might install linux on it anyways but also might take a stab at packaging their app on the Chromestore, or put it on the Canary channel and submit early bug reports. If a couple especially price insensitive casual users buy them that's just a bonus.

It might also have the effect of catching people's attention who then go on to buy a lower price Chromebook. Imagine a casual laptop shopper wants a small nice laptop. They look for a Macbook / Air because they are small seem pretty capable and have nice commercials. They also notice this Pixel because it's in the same price range and other search filters, so it must be similar, right? They find it runs this strange "ChromeOS" which is really just a browser. Come to think of it that's all they really need, what other Chromebooks are there? Ohh look here's one that does everything I was planning on doing with the Macbook for $300. This is not the typical HN reader, but I'd wager a good many laptop purchases work like this.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#103

Post by linsomniac »

I've just recently gotten OpenVPN and SSH working on my Chromebook and it is fairly decent, though with some limitations that make me wonder who is really paying $1,100 and up for a Chromebook...

I got one of those crazy HP 13 chromebooks, a Pixel-level device that at the time a few months ago was really the only available option more recent than the Pixel. I ended up finding it on Woot for $520, instead of nearly a grand.

It has the high res display, charges over USB-C so I can use the same charger for my laptop, chromebook, phone, and Fiance's laptop. The device is nice.

The OpenVPN was not TOO bad to set up, but you seem to only be able to have one VPN active at a time. So I can connect to either the office OR the data center OR my personal network, where my laptop can connect to all of them.

The SSH works great, but doesn't have an SSH agent so copying from one remote machine to another doesn't really work. It looks like there is some agent option but I haven't gotten that working. One nice feature of the SSH program is that it can map the remote system as a local Chromebook drive, so I can drag and drop downloaded files when I need to.

For programming I'm looking at Cloud9, which I've played with in the past but never seriously. Probably will just end up SSHing to a box and running vim, I do very little development.

For running Ansible sysadmin tasks, I'm either going to have to go into my desktop and set up an SSH agent to handle the connections to all the other hosts, or use Rundeck once I've committed and pushed the Ansible changes.

So, 90% of what I NEED a laptop for at home (something broke at work, working on personal servers/network), the Chromebook will do, though not quite as nicely as a laptop. Also, I'm using Enpass for passwords, and on the Chromebook I'm using the Android app, which kind of sucks compared to the Linux app version.

The comparison is that around the same time I got a Lenovo T470s running Linux. Also has high res display, also is tiny. It has something weird going on with the mouse buttons where after a suspend they sometimes "stick".

The Chromebook is less expensive, though not really disposable. The $250 chromebook I tried really kind of sucked.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#104

Post by leggomylibro »

EddieRingle wrote: post #98
leggomylibro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a good reason to go with a 3rd-party manufacturer. Almost all non-Google Chromebooks include microSD card slots, so you can get another 128GB of persistently-mounted executable flash for large builds and similar. Google does not want you to use microSD cards. Google wants you to use Google Drive.

My Chromebook Pixel LS has an SD card slot. It wouldn't be a surprise if this one also has one.

Oh, nice! It would be great to see them reversing that trend.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#105

Post by anjbe »

EddieRingle wrote: post #98
leggomylibro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a good reason to go with a 3rd-party manufacturer. Almost all non-Google Chromebooks include microSD card slots, so you can get another 128GB of persistently-mounted executable flash for large builds and similar. Google does not want you to use microSD cards. Google wants you to use Google Drive.

My Chromebook Pixel LS has an SD card slot. It wouldn't be a surprise if this one also has one.

Unfortunately, it’s on an internal USB 2 bus, which makes SD access extreme slow. All the external USB ports are at least 3.0, so I use a slim 64GB flash drive.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#106

Post by mrbill »

Pigo wrote: post #85
nickjj wrote: post #73

I think I'll stick with my Toshiba Chromebook CB35. - It runs native Linux - Works awesome for every day web development - 1080p IPS display - $350 bucks total If anyone wants to see how to set that up (it requires installing GalliumOS which is a native Linux OS for Chromebooks) and read a full review it's over at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo... .

I bought a Pixel a few years back, knowing full well that it was a luxury expense compared to the other Chromebooks out there (and yet still cheaper than what I'd spend on just about anything else out there). One of the coolest parts was getting so much free drive storage with it, but now that seems to be something you get with a lot of Google products. I always have a Windows machine from work, but VS Code runs on b…

I bought the non-LS Pixel, the 2015 model. Great machine, felt very well built, etc.. but I had no use for the touchscreen, and eventually sold the system to a friend while it still had some resale value left.

My normal Chromebook workflow just couldn't justify the $1K model versus one of the $200-350 "low end" units with a FHD non-touchscreen.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#107

Post by haikuginger »

bubblethink wrote: post #91

Is there any real technical reason to have soldered RAM and storage ? A well built $1200 linux laptop would still be OK if it weren't artificially gimped. M.2 ssds are already quite thin. So the form factor argument doesn't hold. The storage markup on these devices is huge considering that a 1 TB nvme pcie m.2 ssd goes for under $350 (even less during sales).

Apple has argued that soldered RAM allows them to control traces in a way that lets them get better performance at lower power.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#108

Post by mmagin »

bubblethink wrote: post #91

Is there any real technical reason to have soldered RAM and storage ? A well built $1200 linux laptop would still be OK if it weren't artificially gimped. M.2 ssds are already quite thin. So the form factor argument doesn't hold. The storage markup on these devices is huge considering that a 1 TB nvme pcie m.2 ssd goes for under $350 (even less during sales).

Cost, durability, probably easier to fit into an even thinner form factor.

I don't like it either, but I'm pretty sure they're not just doing it to be a jerk.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#109

Post by leggomylibro »

anjbe wrote: post #105
EddieRingle wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Chromebook Pixel LS has an SD card slot. It wouldn't be a surprise if this one also has one.

Unfortunately, it’s on an internal USB 2 bus, which makes SD access extreme slow. All the external USB ports are at least 3.0, so I use a slim 64GB flash drive.

Huh, that's king of a weird decision, but I guess it is probably going to be near the USB connectors on the board, anyways. I guess that probably means it's falling back to a normal SPI interface instead of the faster quad-SPI MMC interface? Maybe they don't want to spend one of their chip's QSPI peripherals on storage expansion.

Re: Google Pixelbook Is Google’s New Chromebook

#110

Post by acangiano »

sethrin wrote: post #66
jimmytidey wrote: post #10

Would it run an actual Linux OS?

Crouton[0] is one option for that, but I would recommend GalliumOS[1] to anyone interested in a Chromebook. My current laptop is an Acer C720, purchased for $110 and running GalliumOS. It's not shiny or new, but it gets the job done, and it's practically cheap enough to be disposable. There are admittedly times when I wish I could justify the cost of a Pixel or an XPS 13, but I can't really get past the idea of being…

> but I would recommend GalliumOS[1] to anyone interested in a Chromebook

Just make sure the spacebar is never pressed at boot. That's all it takes to screw up your nice dual boot setup.

Post reply on HN