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Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

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Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#141

Post by tannhaeuser »

jchw wrote: post #118
tannhaeuser wrote: post #42

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

Dell XPS series looks fantastic from the outside, but there are a few things that stop me from wanting one, that I've mostly observed from other owners of XPS laptops, having not owned one myself. 1. The keyboard. It's apparently not so bad once you get used to it, but compared to typing on my Thinkpad I find myself unhappy with it; it feels spongier in comparison, and the key travel is pretty short (though not nearl…

I can't really agree.

Having worked on an original IBM Model M keyboard in the 90s and as touch typist, I'm as much as a keyboard snob as could be, and I think the keyboard on the XPS 13 is excellent for what it is. I had the opportunity to compare an X1 Carbon keyboard (or was it another high end Lenovo?) against the XPS 13 in a shop where they had both on display, and preferred the XPS 13 subjectively. The Lenovo, certainly a high end part, had more key travel, and was also quite a bit wider; both facts combined made the outer left and outer right keys "block"/"skew" because they weren't hit straight from the top. Also, the keys were a bit too loose/clacky and felt more like a cheap desktop keyboard. I can't imagine typing on that thing as fast as I can on the Dell. The Lenovo also was quite a bit more expensive than the Dell, but had an atrocious 14" TN display (manufactured to 10+ year old standards) next to the Dell's.

> Linux support is actually really awful ... [XPS] only well supported with the exact version of Ubuntu it ships with

That's not been my experience at all. I'm running the XPS 13 for over two years now and everything works out of the box on my non-Developer Edition model (with the occasional glitch, like once every other month, of WLAN reconnect failure and power management switching into a really slow mode when waking up/opening the lid).

Fully agree with Arch Linux wiki pages; used them as resource to get Ubuntu running on the Dell XPS when this wasn't yet possible out of the box.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#142

Post by mattbreeden »

I have a $300 (plus SSD price) Dell Chromebook 13 from a few years ago which I use https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton on to run Ubuntu with i3. It's a wonderful machine for light web dev (I've never tried any really stressful development, I use my fuller spec'ed laptop for that). Great battery life, light, best keyboard I've used. I don't know how well it would work for 'serious' development depending on your field, but it's probably the best starter laptop for programming I could possibly imagine.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#143

Post by IanCal »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #115
IanCal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint here, XPS 13 user, hate it. Worst coil whine I've heard on anything, fan sounds like it's catching, WiFi on Ubuntu very unreliable. Trackpad is atrocious. I think it varies a lot between models.

Do you get coil whine when you plug in a wired mouse and move it around? My office just got a few Latitude ultrabooks and they all make weird sounds when we use an external mouse.

It's down to the graphics I think. Video playing, some pictures and any scrolling are pretty bad.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#144

Post by _8j50 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #42

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

Purism and a few other privacy focused laptops are more "chic" if that's the goal.

Does chromebook support virtual machines well (never used it)? If it doesn't I would call that a deal breaker for myself at least.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#145

Post by lettergram »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #110
lettergram wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my Arch Linux T450 Lenovo laptopand it's a beast. $500 on eBay + $180 for SSD + $150 for RAM. My laptop has 20Gb of RAM, 2x 1Tb SSDs, and 10 hours battery life, with 1 hot swap batteries pushing me to 18 hours battery life if I want it. Total cost: ~$900 with tax and shipping IMO best track pad outside of Apple + best laptop keyboard

Good specs, but that sounds really heavy.

Weighs less than my Mac for work - it's 14" vs the 15" Mac

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#146

Post by tannhaeuser »

mattbreeden wrote: post #137
tannhaeuser wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a Dell XPS 13", and I'm absoluting loving it; especially the keyboard works great for me as a touch typist/vi user, which I didn't expect since the keyboard is what ThinkPads are acclaimed for. That said, battery mileage is no match to Apple notebooks in my experience. I can get 3 to 4 hours max, though I'm occasionally doing CPU-intense stuff which will reduce this to 1-2 hours. If Apple actually would prod…

> I've got a Dell XPS 13", and I'm absoluting loving it; especially the keyboard works great for me as a touch typist/vi user This is insane to me. My XPS 13 caused me excruciating pain to type on. I try to warn people every chance I get. Hurt my fingers more than any laptop I've ever used, to the point where I could not even use the laptop keyboard, I would only use it with an external keyboard. Best keyboards I've…

That's strange indeed, and goes to show that keyboard preferences are highly subjective. I guess its best if the buyer checks out for his/herself in a shop.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#147

Post by tbyehl »

cagenut wrote: post #28

I've been using my Samsung Chromebook Plus for about a year now, and the answer is a fairly clear: no. Everything about it is just sluggish and laggy. The opposite of snappy. This is compounded by the fact that the AWS and GCP web interfaces I spend a lot of time in aren't exactly lightweight, but that's the work. The SSH client is similarly just ever so slightly off. In terms of just compatibility pains, don't even…

> The SSH client is similarly just ever so slightly off.

The Google Chrome SSH app is an abomination. If you have Dev mode enabled, OpenSSH is in the shell (open the crosh cli and type 'shell'). The Termius Chrome app is also decent but they're no longer developing it.

> Everything about it is just sluggish and laggy > So maybe a Pixelbook with its full-i5 would get over the hurdle

I'm very pleased with the performance of my Acer R 13, which is fairly comparable to the CB Plus. I'm mostly using it as a 'dumb' terminal (ssh, RDP, Citrix Receiver) and not doing anything terribly taxing in the browser or Crouton. I suspect Crostini will push me towards a higher spec ChromeBook but for my current workflows it's more than sufficient.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#148

Post by PascLeRasc »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #128
PascLeRasc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the de facto control key on Macbooks since they aren't in the bottom left corner. It'd be cool if we could configure a single caps lock keypress to Esc and holding it down to Control.

I use mine for escape and hadn’t considered using it for control. Is it more comfortable?

Since I'm just using it for ctrl+c in a terminal, it's much more comfortable.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#150

Post by brazzledazzle »

tedmiston wrote: post #58
jonhendry18 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you remove the Siri button from the touch bar, or disable Siri altogether? Maybe try doing both.

I removed it once. I may be mistaken here, but if I recall, removing it slightly shifted the layout of the other keys throwing off my muscle memory for the f keys. I'm interested in a solution. I probably hit that key unintentionally 10 times a day.

Check out this post about customizing the touchbar that was on HN a little while ago: http://vas3k.com/blog/touchbar/
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