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Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

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Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#5

Post by dspillett »

ivany wrote: post #3

Coming in even or slightly faster (in most benchmarks) than an Intel Atom D525 from over two years ago is "crazy fast"? I'm impressed with the Chromebook overall and I think it's a cool product but talk about a bait-and-switch title.

I think people are reporting this relative to expectations rather than absolutely: they assumed it woudl be slower due to the lower cost and lower power consumption but the results defied that expectaion.

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#6

Post by tluyben2 »

What's with the only 6.5 hour battery life? I would buy it if it had >=9.

Edit: it's a serious question :) I am really wondering why the Nexus 10 has 9 hours and this 6.5?

Please Google, add a 3rd 'chromebook without chrome os' which is a Nexus 10 (Android but hopefully soon Ubuntu hacked) with a click-on keyboard (with battery) for $350. Thanks!

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#7

Post by ivany »

dspillett wrote: post #5
ivany wrote: post #3

Coming in even or slightly faster (in most benchmarks) than an Intel Atom D525 from over two years ago is "crazy fast"? I'm impressed with the Chromebook overall and I think it's a cool product but talk about a bait-and-switch title.

I think people are reporting this relative to expectations rather than absolutely: they assumed it woudl be slower due to the lower cost and lower power consumption but the results defied that expectaion.

$250 is not exceptionally low cost for a netbook. Furthermore the power dissipation of the chromebook under load is only slightly better than a comparable atom system [1]. The idle performance is better, I will give them that. Still, the death of x86 in the face of ARM for performance-sensitive environments (even when power consumption is a factor) has been greatly exaggerated.

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6422/samsung-chromebook-xe303-...

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#8

Post by crayola »

itry wrote: post #4

The A15 seems to be the same weight as the Macbook air. I always thought about buying an MBA, but I feared the hassle of installing Linux on it. Is the A15 my future development machine? All my development happens in ssh and firefox. So performance is not an issue.

I am also starting to consider this for development, but I need more assurance that it is a viable option. Does everything mostly work out of the box, or would there be a lot of tinkering / troubleshooting required, e.g. because of the somewhat non-standard nature of running ubuntu on ARM architecture? What about drivers, e.g. for wifi and trackpad?

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#9

Post by ivany »

crayola wrote: post #8
itry wrote: post #4

The A15 seems to be the same weight as the Macbook air. I always thought about buying an MBA, but I feared the hassle of installing Linux on it. Is the A15 my future development machine? All my development happens in ssh and firefox. So performance is not an issue.

I am also starting to consider this for development, but I need more assurance that it is a viable option. Does everything mostly work out of the box, or would there be a lot of tinkering / troubleshooting required, e.g. because of the somewhat non-standard nature of running ubuntu on ARM architecture? What about drivers, e.g. for wifi and trackpad?

After running debian on an ARM box for the past ~5 years, my experience has been pretty favorable. If there's a solid community following (which is a good bet with this product given the hype around it) the drivers should be a non-issue. Installation went very smoothly for me. Everything else, if it can get built from source, should be fine. On my box apt-get install "just works" for almost all of the software I use, and maybe 75% of make installs go smoothly with relatively little tinkering required.

For getting actually work done, I use an x86 laptop. I wouldn't ever go back to using a netbook or any non-mainstream notebook with iffy linux support. It's just not worth your time to deal with technical issues. Buy the best tools that you can find (best being what works for you).

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