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Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#31

Post by 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 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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#32

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#33

Post by jcun4128 »

keenerd wrote: post #27
jcun4128 wrote: post #10

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 ju…

> I know not really able to do much on a 11.6" Sir, have you heard the gospel of the Tiling Window Manager? Really though, they are fantastic. You get ten times as much screen real estate at the tips of your fingers. My laptop has a 10" screen, it is fine. And let us not forget that Steve Jobs selected a 9" monitor for the Macintosh. How much more do you need :-) So far the only software I miss is Darktable. They use…

With the garbage computers I use I definitely use i3. I don't know guess depends on screen resolution if you're concerned about UI (to be able to develop at common resolutions like 1366x768, 1920x1080, etc...

I personally prefer a larger screen mine eyes not so good I mean like 2-3 feet away from the screen is nice.

I'm not aware of DarkTable (don't know what it is)

Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#34

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#35

Post by 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). 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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#36

Post by ce4 »

ralmidani wrote: post #7

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'…

for some models, there are ways to disable that.

https://www.coreboot.org/Chromebooks

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Custom_firmware_for_Chr...

Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#38

Post by henrythewasp »

keenerd wrote: post #20
ralmidani wrote: post #7

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'…

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.

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

Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?

#40

Post by keenerd »

jholman wrote: post #28
keenerd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Several months of uptime with native linux, or with Crouton? My crouton-using Pixel shuts itself down if I don't use it for 24h, even without low battery. So I press that button combo about once a week. It's definitely a mild pain in the butt, losing all the state in my dozen terminals.

Native. I wrote up that experience: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/
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