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Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

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Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#11

Post by dj2stein9 »

bobbydavid wrote: post #8
jkldotio wrote: post #5

I don't see the point in using a crippled operating system when it will prevent you from quickly editing a low res screen cast or editing an image in the GIMP. Machines in that price range have enough performance to do some of these tasks even if they're not optimal for them. If I'm on the move away from a bigger system I might still need to do it though, so not having that capacity just because of someone's "in the…

As stated in the article, the "point" is to have the same functionality for a fraction of the cost. You can still run image editing software or whatever you'd run on your workstation using NX. That's somewhat inconvenient, but then it boots faster with no malware, and you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally. So it's a trade-off, not a "crippling" as you've put it. Some folks, like the author, bare…

    you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally.
That's what scares me the most. Unless I have the option of not using Google's infrastructure, and can run my own "ChromeOS Storage/Auth Server" on a computer of my choice, then I'd never trust the OS. Google is expecting a surreal amount of trust that no single corporation should be given.

Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#13

Post by jkldotio »

bobbydavid wrote: post #8
jkldotio wrote: post #5

I don't see the point in using a crippled operating system when it will prevent you from quickly editing a low res screen cast or editing an image in the GIMP. Machines in that price range have enough performance to do some of these tasks even if they're not optimal for them. If I'm on the move away from a bigger system I might still need to do it though, so not having that capacity just because of someone's "in the…

As stated in the article, the "point" is to have the same functionality for a fraction of the cost. You can still run image editing software or whatever you'd run on your workstation using NX. That's somewhat inconvenient, but then it boots faster with no malware, and you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally. So it's a trade-off, not a "crippling" as you've put it. Some folks, like the author, bare…

I can get the same functionality in terms of hardware at the more or less same cost, certainly not $1000 more as you claim. A 1.7gighz ARM or the other versions aren't more powerful than a 1.6gighz or higher Atom processor at the same price point.

And I can run a real operating system on that hardware with no problems. My laptop boots in less than 10 seconds and I trust Ubuntu just as much as a Chromebook for security. If you are worried about the security of local files you can encrypt your drive, very simply in the last few versions of Ubuntu but I don't bother, if needs be.

None of the points you make in favour of the Chromebook are exclusive to it, what's exclusive to it though is you can't get access to the vast flexibility of a local system and have to go through NX.

That's all fine for people who only do back-end stuff, or Google if they want their employees to "dog food" living in the cloud, but for someone who wants to be able to do normal everyday things like edit images, test locally or any of the many other advantages of a flexible system it doesn't really cut it. If there were locally running JavaScript equivalents for image editing and everything else we'd be a bit closer to feature parity but I still wouldn't see the major attraction.

Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#14

Post by stanleydrew »

jkldotio wrote: post #5

I don't see the point in using a crippled operating system when it will prevent you from quickly editing a low res screen cast or editing an image in the GIMP. Machines in that price range have enough performance to do some of these tasks even if they're not optimal for them. If I'm on the move away from a bigger system I might still need to do it though, so not having that capacity just because of someone's "in the…

Genuinely curious, since I've used every nexus device to date: which ones disable tethering? I can't recall one that does.

Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#15

Post by rwmj »

I used one (running Fedora 17) for a couple of weeks as a light development machine, and wrote about it here:

https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/some-thoughts-after-2-...

Note I was using it for disconnected development on the road, not as a fancy ssh client as in the article.

The upshot is that it's not too bad as a development machine. But you definitely want to root it and put something other than ChromeOS on it. Fedora, Ubuntu and other regular Linux distros are available.

Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#16

Post by cpursley »

With Nitrous.io (previously action.io) https://www.nitrous.io/#aio any device with a large enough screen and a modern web browser makes an excellent dev machine. Been using it for the past several weeks. For web apps, it's the future. Basically no configuration and you get a linux environment that is similar to most production environments.

Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#17

Post by ecspike »

stanleydrew wrote: post #14
jkldotio wrote: post #5

I don't see the point in using a crippled operating system when it will prevent you from quickly editing a low res screen cast or editing an image in the GIMP. Machines in that price range have enough performance to do some of these tasks even if they're not optimal for them. If I'm on the move away from a bigger system I might still need to do it though, so not having that capacity just because of someone's "in the…

Genuinely curious, since I've used every nexus device to date: which ones disable tethering? I can't recall one that does.

All of the GSM ones tether fine. The Verizon Galaxy Nexus needed rooting or a workaround to tether.

That was more so a Verizon issue that Google's choice. Also remember that Verizon had disabled Google Wallet on that model in favor of the still not launched ISIS.

It's a moot point now because the Nexus 4 is GSM-only.

Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#18

Post by w0utert »

jkldotio wrote: post #13
bobbydavid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated in the article, the "point" is to have the same functionality for a fraction of the cost. You can still run image editing software or whatever you'd run on your workstation using NX. That's somewhat inconvenient, but then it boots faster with no malware, and you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally. So it's a trade-off, not a "crippling" as you've put it. Some folks, like the author, bare…

I can get the same functionality in terms of hardware at the more or less same cost, certainly not $1000 more as you claim. A 1.7gighz ARM or the other versions aren't more powerful than a 1.6gighz or higher Atom processor at the same price point. And I can run a real operating system on that hardware with no problems. My laptop boots in less than 10 seconds and I trust Ubuntu just as much as a Chromebook for securit…

>> None of the points you make in favour of the Chromebook are exclusive to it, what's exclusive to it though is you can't get access to the vast flexibility of a local system and have to go through NX.

Adding to that working with remote GUI apps simply sucks compared to running them locally, for all kinds of reasons. It's less responsive, applications don't always integrate well with the rest of the OS (think keyboard/language settings, terminal capabilities, reliable copy/paste), you lose things like local search, some applications you rarely use will not be available on the remote, and if your network connection goes down you lose your session. And who's going to set up and maintain the NX service? If having your work in the cloud matters a lot, I would much rather just mount some remote filesystem for storing it, and run all my dev tools locally.

I tend to agree I don't see the point here, since when is a cheap machine to SSH to some other box anything special, let alone a viable replacement for a dev system? I did stuff like this (SSH-ing to a remote host, editing webpages there, viewing the result locally) literally 10 years ago on a Pentium-233 laptop you couldn't even give away for free today because no-one would want to have it. For $250 there's a lot of decent notebooks that would do everything a Chromebook does, and adequately run a modern linux distro to boot.

Re: Chromebook can make a surprisingly sweet machine for a developer

#19

Post by 6ren »

jkldotio wrote: post #13
bobbydavid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated in the article, the "point" is to have the same functionality for a fraction of the cost. You can still run image editing software or whatever you'd run on your workstation using NX. That's somewhat inconvenient, but then it boots faster with no malware, and you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally. So it's a trade-off, not a "crippling" as you've put it. Some folks, like the author, bare…

I can get the same functionality in terms of hardware at the more or less same cost, certainly not $1000 more as you claim. A 1.7gighz ARM or the other versions aren't more powerful than a 1.6gighz or higher Atom processor at the same price point. And I can run a real operating system on that hardware with no problems. My laptop boots in less than 10 seconds and I trust Ubuntu just as much as a Chromebook for securit…

$1000 is an exaggeration, but chromebooks really are significantly cheaper than netbooks/laptops: $250 ARM and $199 Celeron.

But you know, just now considering the restrictions that Apple, Google and Microsoft put on their mobile machines, because they can, creates a real opportunity for Firefox OS (and yes ubuntu). Though niche, as most consumers won't care... unless the restrictions go too far.

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