"As far as Debian/Ubuntu (and crouton), that's fine as far as it goes, but then you don't end up with a Chromebook, just a cheap mini-notebook with flaky drivers."
Hmm, I'm not sure about that. I went the Crouton route on my $169 Chromebook, and now I have both ChromeOS and Ubuntu. Plus I can switch between them quickly. And if I understand Crouton, the chroot is actually using the same kernel and drivers as ChromeOS. I haven't had any driver issues. And it's easy to set up encryption for your chroot. I think it's a good solution.
So, the solution to the uncertain threat of airlines picking your luggage and stealing your computer or its data is... giving over your data to somebody that it's certain it's spying on you and whose business model is to comb over your data. How is this not "you won't catch me, I'll just throw myself off a bridge"? Also, termux has ~600 packages. Debian has 50,000. Besides the basics, you're liable to need packages y…
It might be better to give your data to someone who has to tell you how they're spying on you, than to somebody who legally shouldn't be able to but does so anyway.
One of the BIGGEST drawbacks using a Chromebook with 11.6 inch screen that nobody here talks about yet, is the grainy and crappy 1366 x 768 screen resolution! I've been a long time Macs guy anything inferior than RetinaDisplay will considerably straining my eyes before I am used to it. Dell XPS 13 included.
I have the Samsung Chromebook 3 (same size and resolution). I don't mind it at all. By comparison, the 14" Lenovo from my employer has the same resolution and looks worse. The Chromebook is no retina display, but it's not that bad in my opinion.
Nearly every how-to and blog post I've found on "Chromebooks for developers" essentially starts with either: "Boot into Developer Mode" or "Install Debian/Ubuntu as the main OS". I'll just say it: This is bad advice. It would be akin to recommending that friends jailbreak their shiny new iPhone. You're obviously free to do as you wish with your own gear, but recognize that at Step 1, you'll have lost most of the core security features of Chromebook
Well, it's possible to temporarily unlock firmware write protection and replace Google key with your own and run self-signed kernels and arbitrary distribution securely. But indeed, I haven't heard of anyone actually going through the effort to do so.
I'm not sure how much extra "security" you're really getting out of staying strictly within ChromeOS. Yes, Secure Boot is disabled. However, the ChromeOS partition is still encrypted, and you can manually encrypt any of your crouton chroot environments, so someone looking at the thing still wouldn't be able to peek into the contents. If you're asked, "Why is this in Developer Mode?", you can answer, "I'm a developer.…
As someone who has an on-off interest in ChromeOS but with little to no knowledge about it, does vim/neovim work? I found some vim version on the chrome web store but it is last updated on 2014 and pinned to 7.4 which was a bit disappointing.
Is it not currently possible to install any GUI-based IDEs into Chrome OS?
You can currently only use web based IDEs or Android based IDEs in Chrome OS. There are some good web ones (Cloud9) out there and even a few Android based ones (AIDE). You won't be running any Windows or Linux IDEs though (because Chrome OS is not either of those.)
If you're referring to full-blown IntelliJ, Elcipse, VS, etc, the answer is no afaik. But if syntax highlighting, code completion and lightweight refactoring (within and across files) counts, then Caret or Zed might be worth a look. These are native Chrome apps, and don't require web access/connectivity. (I wrote most of the Chromebook piece in the OP and all my Go code using Caret, and am happy with it). I did some toy stress testing by opening up a few copies of War & Peace (1.5M+ line) text files in Caret. It took a couple of seconds to load, but search & replace and rapid scrolling/navigating worked well. Trying the same thing in vim either in Termux natively or via local ssh didn't hiccup at all. As mentioned in other threads, it's a side effect of design decisions, and naive assumptions about in-memory files. Kids today...
I used to own a chromebook and I loved it... until it failed.
I had computers that failed before, and usually I could manage to repair them somehow, most often by using a linux liveUSB, but with this chromebook, I've tried many things but I could not do anything. No access to BIOS, not bootable USB, nothing. Complete black box.
So I'm not sure I'll buy an other chromebook anytime soon.
So, the solution to the uncertain threat of airlines picking your luggage and stealing your computer or its data is... giving over your data to somebody that it's certain it's spying on you and whose business model is to comb over your data. How is this not "you won't catch me, I'll just throw myself off a bridge"? Also, termux has ~600 packages. Debian has 50,000. Besides the basics, you're liable to need packages y…
It might be better to give your data to someone who has to tell you how they're spying on you, than to somebody who legally shouldn't be able to but does so anyway.
It's a false alternative. Encrypt your hard drive with a key on a thumb drive on your person. Problem solved: nobody can read your hard drive unless they physically get your key as well.
I have been using the YubiKey for over a year now, and the novelty wore off. I lost my key a couple of weeks ago and was surprised how easy it was to get back into my accounts with just my phone. There is no point in using something like that if providers allow you to failover to more conventional authentication methods without any hassle; the keys are useless. They are not going to add manual verification for a coup…
Depends on the provider. From some quick Googling Lastpass at least requires email verification before disabling Yubikey support. https://lastpass.com/support.php?cmd=showfaq&id=2546 Even for providers that do provide seamless failover, the inevitable "we see you requested an account recovery" email would serve as useful canary to know you're being targeted.
> Depends on the provider
That was the whole point of my comment. It is up to the vendor and vendors do a horrible job.
> the inevitable "we see you requested an account recovery" email would serve as useful canary
There is nothing useful here. They are allowing you to bypass a secure key with a dumb email confirmation.
Your idea of a 'useful canary' is great; until you get rooted at 5 AM on a Monday morning and that email disappears before you wake up.
Indeed, how dare they suggest that Google would track! They would never do such a thing!
If the claim being made was that they track your usage of their products, that would have been a reasonable response. But the claim being made is that they continuously monitor you through the webcam and microphone. That is extremely bold and, may I say, complete tinfoil nuttery.
Why is that so hard to believe? Personalized ads are huge right now, if you could listen in to people's conversations you can use the data to improve your ad conversion rate. If there's ROI in recording and doing the data collection you can bet they have at least experimented with it.
Can't imagine what recording webcams would do- but I suppose it might be effective for something.