Live data from Hacker News

I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

blog.johnozbay.com

51–60 of 187 posts

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, what conclusion am i supposed to get from looking at their submissions? are you suggesting they are a bot? a lenovo employee? just say what you mean instead of being cryptic about it

Assuming they are pointing out what looks like karma farming which isn't really in the spirit of the site.

[deleted]

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#52

Going from complaining about Apple not having enough polish in the fine details of their UI to suggesting we all switch to Chromebooks is so completely inconsistent that there must be other motivations. In one post they're complaining about things like Apple having the search bar in different locations in different apps, and in the next post they're seriously trying to tell us that a laptop that requires modifying th…

It's possible that your own opinions are coloring this perspective. As a Linux user, if you gave me the choice between switching back to macOS or dailying ChromeOS instead, it's objectively (sadly) true that the ChromeOS machine would do a better job handling my daily tasks. Going back to macOS would require me to keep multiple desktop machines around for gaming, filesystem manipulation and native Linux containers. ChromeOS would be viable for all of those.

> You can technically game on some Chromebooks, but come on.

I just want the Steam edition of Dwarf Fortress, really =)

> If you were trying to do native Linux development on a Chromebook you'd be going through more obstacles.

Not really. Crostini has been supported for years, and it uses less resources than macOS containers while supporting normal filesystems instead of virtualizing it on APFS like Docker does.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#54

Going from complaining about Apple not having enough polish in the fine details of their UI to suggesting we all switch to Chromebooks is so completely inconsistent that there must be other motivations. In one post they're complaining about things like Apple having the search bar in different locations in different apps, and in the next post they're seriously trying to tell us that a laptop that requires modifying th…

It's possible that your own opinions are coloring this perspective. As a Linux user, if you gave me the choice between switching back to macOS or dailying ChromeOS instead, it's objectively (sadly) true that the ChromeOS machine would do a better job handling my daily tasks. Going back to macOS would require me to keep multiple desktop machines around for gaming, filesystem manipulation and native Linux containers. C…

[deleted]

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#56
I don't know why the author plays down the versatility of Chromebooks/ChromeOS so much. You can install the Linux Dev VM with 5 clicks in the settings. You get a fully featured Debian VM with nested virtualization support and seamless Wayland, VirGL and USB passtrough.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#57
I'm relatively uniquely qualified to weigh in here... I've been linux-native for decades now on my home desktops (debian), and the last time I used windows for work was ~2005-ish with work Mac laptops, and "disposable" chromebooks at home for personal use + travel.

1) It started with Crouton (open source, "let's get access to the underlying linux system"), and worked pretty well. IIRC you had to switch to "dev mode" to get access to it.

2) Crostini and all the layer-cake isolation is wildly impressive! ...it's more VM-based with suuuper adjudicated interaction boundaries between `chromeos` and the underlying linux vm.

Arch overview: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...

Seneschal (file management/isolation): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...

Sommelier (gui passthrough/punch-through): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...

3) I've recently (intentionally) switched to their new "Baguette" beta VM/Container (you can talk to google AI mode about it, but general access docs and links are fairly sparse: "...a ChromeOS architectural shift (arriving around v142-146) that enables containerless Linux Virtual Machines, running directly via KVM instead of LXD. It removes the middle container layer for increased efficiency and flexibility, allowing for advanced features like direct PCI passthrough, while providing improved storage management compared to legacy Crostini."

4) I think over the last ~15 years I've gone from 4gb => 8gb => 16gb (just recently) and sticking with "premium-ish" dev-centric laptops (mostly: linux, git, web dev, inkscape, random hacking, etc). Currently the Acer Spin 714, previously Samsung XE930QCA... both "tablet adjacent" with full fliparound or "tent style" for watching a movie or doodling with styluses.

Bang-for-Buck, I was able to get the Spin714 for ~$300 @ 16gb ram (used-ish, off ebay) which is a STEAL, and similar story for the Samsung one. They're definitely very capable machines, and treating them as "dumb terminals with a VM I can pop open and scp files to a remote host or git push" is fantastic!

HOWEVER: beware! Google w/ Baguette is stupidly complicated on how to open a port on the device itself for other computers to be able to access servers on the local device. I argued with the google AI for like an hour trying to figure out the best way to allow `git pull my-chromebook.localdomain:./Git/some-repo` and eventually had to settle on a raw `ssh` reverse proxy pipe where I was pulling from `my-other-machine.localdomain:localhost:2222:./Git/some-repo` which was forwarded back (over SSH) to the chromebook itself.

It used to be that you could rationally: `python -m http`, open an "enable port forwarding" thingy in the terminal settings and be able to connect to the service w/o much ceremony. Nowadays they're effectively nanny-ifying the OS and it's getting much harder to do the same thing (removing visible UI for port forwarding, needing hidden settings deep links or `chrome://flags` stuff to be able to access a server/service RUNNING ON YOUR OWN MACHINE FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN NETWORK). Supposedly the cool kids are using tailscale or whatever, but it's literally `localhostlocalhost` and I don't want to have to set up a VPN or whatever to make that work, I just want to doodle on local web services in a VM on a machine that can get stolen and not end up losing all my personal/private files.

Also, ask google AI mode: "when is google phasing out chromebook and chromeos and presumably near-native linux support on their machines?" => """Court documents and executive statements reveal a plan to retire the existing ChromeOS software stack by 2034. This legacy system is expected to be replaced by a unified platform internally codenamed "Project Aluminium," which migrates ChromeOS fully onto the Android tech stack."""

...so ~8 more years of `chromeos`/`linux` and then it'll no longer be the year of linux on the desktop!

Yes, they can be very comfortable and very capable machines, but they're losing a bit of their central spirit and developer-friendliness over time.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by open and closed? ChromeOS is based on ChromiumOS, which is open source. I guess macOS is based on Darwin technically, but the ratio of open source to proprietary is much higher for ChromeOS than macOS, no?

I think they mean closed as in it is more difficult to install whatever you want on a ChromeOS machine as opposed to a MacOS machine.

What is it that you want to install on ChromeOS that you are unable to? All of the usual Linux and open-source stuff works fine on the built-in Linux environment on it. Possibly even a little better than MacOS in some cases, since you don't need to worry about Apple app signing. There's not literally nothing you can't do, but the list is a lot shorter than most people think, especially those who haven't really tried ChromeOS in a decade and think they're all a glorified web browser on $200 hardware.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#60
I really enjoy ChromeOS, though I'm worried a lot of its simplicity will go away as Google transitions to Android-based laptops. My wife and I use an Asus Chromebook Flip as a kitchen/living room computer that we don't need to think about. No software updates, it just surfs the web and we can flip it into tablet mode if we want to.
Post reply on HN