I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook • Hacker News Board

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#171

Post by pjmlp » Fri, May 08, 2026, 6:48 AM UTC

QuercusMax wrote: post #134

traderj0e wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet it's easier to set up a Linux VM on a Chromebook than on a Mac. But the other side is that anything not explicitly requiring Linux will work natively in macOS, where you also get a nicer terminal. Like I've not needed a Linux VM in years, and the author doing web dev probably won't either.

pretty dang easy to run a Linux container on MacOS using Colima ( https://github.com/abiosoft/colima ).

Yes, however most of us don't really need to use Linux containers for our work, plain traditional UNIX works just fine.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#172

Post by pjmlp » Fri, May 08, 2026, 6:51 AM UTC

wildekek wrote: post #16

I don't really get what the problem with MacOS is. It never gets in my way, so why would I switch? Yes, I found Liquid Glass ugly and two days later I completely forgot about it.

Some people actually want a great GNU/Linux laptop, they buy Apple because macOS is a UNIX with cool hardware, then they discover that UNIX !== GNU/Linux and complain about all the issues running Linux software on macOS.

They start already from the wrong place.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#173

Post by aaztehcy » Fri, May 08, 2026, 7:05 AM UTC

ramses0 wrote: post #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"…

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Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#174

Post by tempestnick » Fri, May 08, 2026, 7:57 AM UTC

I recently had to turn in my work Macbook and started using personal Lenovo Thinkpad E14 -- last or second to last gen.

I have to say that everything, aside from keyboard and hardware (ie CPU, storage etc) on it is bad. Screen is bad, sound si horrible, webcam makes me look like I died a couple of days ago -- all gray and blurry, battery is obviously have nothing on Apple silicon laptops, fans are noisy, touchpad is bad, all is bad. But what impressed me the most are USB-C ports. They are somehow bad too. There's no grip, there's no feedback, you just kind of put a cable somewhere in them and hope it doesn't arc -- because sometimes it sounds like electrical arcing in there. Not quite pencil in a bucket, but not far off. And the thing is new, how do you manage that on a new business laptop? I'm very impressed, in the worst way possible.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#175

Post by skc » Fri, May 08, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8

Good Lord, what next? “I switched from Mac to Windows and you can too”? Might make sense if the Chromebook can be degoogled and set up with a clean Linux distro. Barring that, a regular laptop with Linux may be an option.

He could write the same exact post but swap the word "Mac" for "Windows" and the comment section here would be markedly different.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#176

Post by fatata123 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

nolist_policy wrote: post #72

traderj0e wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"After my last blog post I received tons and tons of emails from people mentioning that they switched to X or Y because of Liquid Glass, and much like them, I switched away from the Apple ecosystem thanks to these ongoing issues as well." Then within 2 sentences: "So this blog post is about my painful journey trying to find a nice piece of hardware that works and feels just as good as Apple's hardware as a web develo…

A Chromebook gets you the elegant UI, touchpad gestures, slim vertically integrated system architecture and the reliable sleep mode of a MacBook without Liquid Glass. Plus Chromebooks have the better keyboard layout IMHO.

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Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#177

Post by array_key_first » Fri, May 08, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

galleywest200 wrote: post #36

montroser wrote: post #33

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.

But how? You can install Linux and android apps on chrome os. I understand this perspective might intuitively make sense, but we need to analyze if it's actually true.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#178

Post by array_key_first » Fri, May 08, 2026, 3:18 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #133

traderj0e wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Linux users who scream about Arch KDE Plasma being better than Kubuntu XFCE++ and change their entire GUI every year. They're obsessing over rounded corners lining up. None of this matters that much. It's more serious on iPhones cause it's glitchy in ways that will interfere with basic usage, also yet another "we need old phones to feel slower" update.

Really hilarious to complain about inconsistency in macOS and then encourage jumping to linux where you have one GTK app, one QT app, an electron app, and some secret fourth thing all running simultaneously with zero consistency or adherence to any kind of human interface guidelines.

Both the gnome project and KDE have HI guidelines.

Also, I don't understand how this is magically better on mac os. Mac os doesn't have electron apps? Get real, it's the same bullshit on every desktop OS. At least we can all agree it's more consistent than windows.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#179

Post by Pfhortune » Fri, May 08, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

I'm interested in the hardware on this... does anyone know if this laptop can boot arm64 Linux natively? Perhaps with an alternate bootloader install?

I've read about plenty of other Chromebooks that can do that, but I can't find any info on booting Linux on this one.

ChromeOS would be so much more compelling if it could be degoogled... An Ungoogled-ChromiumOS would be amazing.

Re: I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

#180

Post by jjtheblunt » Fri, May 08, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

traderj0e wrote: post #85

jjtheblunt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which literature? (that question posed, i had to sleuth around to disambiguate oft repeated misinformation before figuring this all out)

I don't have it in front of me, have just seen conflicting info on a lot on articles about virtualization on Mac. Well wait, UTM's official website clearly says it does support x86 if you're ok with the emu performance hit. Is that wrong?

that checkbox i mentioned above lets you choose to use native Apple ARM via the hypervisor.framework, or use Qemu which lets you do the x86 emulation?