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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–97 of 97 posts

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

#91

Post by neilsimp1 »

yathern wrote: post #58
neilsimp1 wrote: post #54

I use an Acer C720P with GalliumOS installed on it as my secondary dev machine. My main rig is a Windows desktop. I have no real complaints with Gallium or the C720P, it's a really solid little machine, and it's super fast. My only gripe is the keyboard - there's no delete key, there's a magnifying glass where the Caps Lock should go, and that gets mapped to Super, and the worst part, I only have F1-F10, missing F11…

On my Acer c720, alt-backspace acts as delete. Not sure if that's ChromeOSes doing or the keyboard firmware. I've gotten so used to it that I had to make my windows machine do the same thing!

Thanks! That worked for me. I had no idea.

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

#94

Post by jasonvorhe »

bergie wrote: post #17
blikdak wrote: post #16

For the pixelbook price I’d rather get one of these https://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth or since I’m a Mac fanboy a 13” MacBook Pro, then at least I’d be sure the OS would be updated for the next 4 or 5 years or more.

Chrome OS gets roughly that amount of years of updates as well.

Google promises support for at least 5 years after release.

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

#95

Post by crispytx »

I bought a Chromebook two years ago thinking I could wipe out Chrome OS completely and install Ubuntu to use as my primary machine. But I actually was only able to "sort of" install linux using crouton. It was cool but kind of annoying, you had to press all these crazy button combinations to boot up in developer mode and then enter shell commands to bring up Ubuntu. Pretty neat, but I was left with so little storage space I wasn't able to install Android studio so I couldn't use it as my primary laptop. Sadly, I don't think chromebooks make for very good primary machines. However, I wrote this comment using a chromebook, so I obviously dig them even if they have a ways to go.

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

#96

Post by crispytx »

henrythewasp wrote: post #38
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.

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

That's badass. I didn't know you could do a full linux install on a chromebook. I used to run Ubuntu using crouton but I had to press all these crazy button combinations to boot up in developer mode and then enter some more shell commands to finally bring up Ubuntu.

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

#97

Post by deft »

Usually yeah I do. I'm not using a super powerful one (the pixel is a massive waste of money and always was). Just have the 4GB Acer R11. Small, good battery life and a touchscreen.

My setup: Dev mode Chromebrew with tmux,vim,irssi,python3.6

I don't use crouton because I don't need it.

Post reply on HN