Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://archive.is/tQgER
Oh man that leads me into an infinite Cloudflare captcha loop on my iPhone :-(
I've been seeing this complaint on tons of HN posts lately. Cloudflare sucks.
Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#12Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#13I was a big Chromebook supporter for a number of years--especially for travel. But the model I really liked, a ~11" ASUS doesn't seem to have a current equivalent and I generally just travel with an old MacBook now (or don't travel with a laptop at all depending on the nature of the trip). If I'm basically going to need the form factor of a 13" laptop I might as well carry the more general-purpose laptop--even if I mostly use it as a browser.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. App distribution is a major issue for the platform that I ran out of space to really talk about. Those driver-like things are largely extension APIs, but they were once the domain of the now deprecated "Chrome Apps." Both the Apps and Extensions are delivered via the Web Store, but I feel like there's a steady move to deprecate all system-customization on the platform. If you want to use some non-optimiz…
To clarify, you can run standard linux apps in a linux VM with seamless file, wayland and X11 passtrough ("crostini"). Even nested virtualization works. And you can run android apps in a android VM.
I installed Chrome OS Flex on my old laptop and I couldn't be happier, honestly. It has a really light and snappy shell, I can run all these PWA apps at once without so much as a hiccup, and I can use crostini to run Signal and VS Code. The only thing it doesn't handle is Steam, but I couldn't really play anything natively on that machine even on Windows.
And despite Linux being in a virtual machine the general experience is very seamless - I can install .deb packages by simply double clicking them in the file explorer!
Oh and most importantly, GeForce NOW works and I can still use it to play BG3 :D
(it goes without saying that the experience is much better if you're already tied to Google ecosystem, as the file explorer integrates, optionally, with Google Drive)
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#15Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#16It's so bad. Old apps are grandfathered into features they don't have in their new APIs yet. Trying to write an android app for chrome also sucks, there's missing functionality. The APIs are all documented but in the most confusing way so you never know if something will work until you try it. Terrible, never doing it again.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#17Coming from linux and developing for linux, I don't share the authors experience.
I mainly bought my chromebook convertible for university for notetaking. But now I am also doing all my freelance development work on open-source high availability and fault tolerance (qemu colo[1] if you're interested) on this thing. And it works great, the linux VM is very capable with seamless file, wayland and X11 passtrough. Nested virtualization works too.
Sure, it's not native but I don't see a reason why it should be. Google is actually caring about security here, you see it in every part and decision of ChromeOS. Google is taking VM based isolation to the mainstream and showing that a secure OS without ransomware is possible.
And the defaults are well done. The terminal app has infinite scrollback by default and is not too far off of xterm. The touchpad experience is excellent, switching between tabs, going forwards and backwards in history, switching virtual desktops and apps all done with a few gestures.
And don't forget the fonts, ChromeOS is worth it for the fonts alone :). Noto Sans Mono is the default monospace font system-wide, even in the linux VM. It looks awesome in emacs.
The maintainers of the linux part are very friendly, they will actually fix bugs you report. And that ChromeOS as a comercial/consumer OS has a public bug tracker at all, makes it very unique. Try that with windows :).
If you want a excellent out-of-the box (with few exceptions*) linux experience, buy a chromebook. Especially if you want more exotic hardware like convertible with pen input.
About the LaCrOs switch: I suspect the reason why Chrome was so deep integrated into the OS, is because there weren't any good graphics protocols (besides X11 which is meh.) when it launched so Chrome became application and window manager and compositor in one. And now that wayland has matured they are switching to it.
* You're not going to get direct hardware access from the linux VM, so things like running wireshark on your wlan interface, mounting a harddrive that isn't plain exfat or ext4, etc. won't work.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
To clarify, you can run standard linux apps in a linux VM with seamless file, wayland and X11 passtrough ("crostini"). Even nested virtualization works. And you can run android apps in a android VM.
I installed Chrome OS Flex on my old laptop and I couldn't be happier, honestly. It has a really light and snappy shell, I can run all these PWA apps at once without so much as a hiccup, and I can use crostini to run Signal and VS Code. The only thing it doesn't handle is Steam, but I couldn't really play anything natively on that machine even on Windows. And despite Linux being in a virtual machine the general exper…
Wait, you can run crostini on ChromeOS Flex? I thought only real Chromebooks could do that.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#19Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I installed Chrome OS Flex on my old laptop and I couldn't be happier, honestly. It has a really light and snappy shell, I can run all these PWA apps at once without so much as a hiccup, and I can use crostini to run Signal and VS Code. The only thing it doesn't handle is Steam, but I couldn't really play anything natively on that machine even on Windows. And despite Linux being in a virtual machine the general exper…
Wait, you can run crostini on ChromeOS Flex? I thought only real Chromebooks could do that.
You can run Linux VM on Flex. You cannot use the Play store and Android apps.