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Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
41–50 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#42I would say as long as you can install GalliumOS (which is a custom xubuntu build of Linux designed for Chromebooks) on that Pixelbook, then it should be good to go.
Personally, I installed GalliumOS on a $350 Chromebook (Toshiba CB35) and while I don't use it as a primary machine I do quite a bit of "real" development on it.
For example, it has no problem running fairly large Rails applications with Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch running inside of Docker containers. I often have a decent amount of browser tabs, streaming music through Youtube and other typical developer things open at the same time.
Key features for me are a 1080p IPS diplay, a great keyboard and it was only $350 even after buying a third party SSD to swap in.
Full details, a review and guide on how it's done can be found at: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#43I recently switch from a Macbook to the Asus Chrome flipbook and am happy with the following workflow. I enabled developer mode and installed Chromebrew, vim, git, rsync and tmux. I git checkout my projects locally and edit in vim/tmux and then rsync the changes to a cloud server for compilation and testing.
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#44From 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…
your usb key might get stolen. Full disk encryption and regular backups probably buy better assurance.
Also, in my anecdotal experience, the most common failure mode of an USB stick seems to be going completely dead without any prior warning. So regular backups, definitely.
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#45I 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 w…
> Not Developer mode. I want the full security of verified boot.
So you ran something inside of ChromeOS? It seems like a better option would be to replace the bootloader with CoreBoot (which doesn't have a dev mode) and you can add your own keys for whatever OS you choose.
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#46Is 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).…
At least for desktop chrome you can set location access. Most websites geolocate using ip addresses if location is disabled. Works quite well, unless you use a VPN.
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
your usb key might get stolen. Full disk encryption and regular backups probably buy better assurance.
Also, in my anecdotal experience, the most common failure mode of an USB stick seems to be going completely dead without any prior warning. So regular backups, definitely.
Yeah that sucks. I did read that the constant/read write does decrease life, maybe that was specific to SD cards but probably applies to USB as well.
I don't know... one of those things where you think too much about it... like what about general consumers with a password on their Windows/Mac computer... is that "secure"? I don't know.
You could potentially access that hard drive by taking it apart assuming it wasn't a soldered on storage device.
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/
I really liked that computer(haven't bought but have looked at it), well built imo and thin, can actually be useful with regard to the fold into a tablet.
I bought the ASUS Transformer 200 and yeah it's a bit bulky for tablet use but still decent with i3/Ubuntu.
Keeping Windows on there, nice to have.
I had Chromebook 2 as well (with the octacore processor) and having Chrome was nice to switch back into for general use.
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#49Is 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).…
At least for desktop chrome you can set location access. Most websites geolocate using ip addresses if location is disabled. Works quite well, unless you use a VPN.
I cannot find any option to disable geolocation in my current Chrome version on Mac, and when I use a VPN and connect via a different country, sites I visit in Safari are in that country's language, but sites I visit in Chrome, even when private browsing, know the language to use based on my actual country location.
Re: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook or Pixelbook as your primary machine?
#50I used to. I had the second-gen Pixel that has apparently become the third-gen Pixelbook because Google couldn't even resist stealing the name of their own product for something completely different.
I loved it. I could have run Linux natively, but I've spent too much of my life already fighting all the familiar recurring sound/video and suspend/resume and wifi issues on Linux laptops. No, it's not because I'm bad at it. I worked at Red Hat at the time, where most of the people who actually fix this stuff for you also work, and I was no worse than others around me. But being good at fixing problems isn't the same as not having to put up with them in the first place. I don't want to have to take even ten minutes to debug a system issue in the middle of trying to do something else while I'm on the road, over and over again every month or so. The whole point was to have a base platform that was feature-complete and stable, plus a full Linux environment (via crouton) with all of my favorite tools available simultaneously. It also helped that it's a beautiful piece of hardware, with a nice (somewhat square-ish) screen and a trackpad that works and the best battery life I've seen so far.
It was really like having two laptops instead of one, each suited to its purpose. The only reason I don't still use it is that I couldn't be bothered replicating all of the "special sauce" to conform with the infosec requirements of my current employer on an OS different than the one they installed on the laptop they gave me. If I were to switch jobs again, or retire, I'd gladly go back to the Pixel.