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Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#22Thinkpad Chromebook with Linux Mint FLIES - I am surprised the amount of battery life I get with it with minimal configurations that I have been running over a year, this holds up with a MacBook for me.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://archive.is/tQgER
Oh man that leads me into an infinite Cloudflare captcha loop on my iPhone :-(
Is it really Cloudflare? There is no branding and all the other Cloudflare sites have stopped using Google's reCaptcha and switched to in-house solution.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#24I'm not sure what a ChromeOS developer writes, since the "native apps" are PWAs only. The author mentions various driver-like things, such as a custom keyboard. Can such custom drivers be installed when not in Developer Mode? I see no mechanism to do so, nor any "ChromeOS app store" where I might download such things. If you're a ChromeOS developer, where and how do you distribute your products?
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…
> I feel like there's a steady move to deprecate all system-customization on the platform.
To avoid the android type mess Chromeos is and was always in the iron grip of Google. That is the way to keep things secure. And I am glad it is so. Once you expose important APIs to the main google account - there will be tons of crap ChromeAPPS (not android but the chrome apps) that will be difficult to supervise (i.e) repeat of playstore.
Though painful and slow the aim is to move everything non-google to PlayStore. That way all crap is isolated into android.
For the commandline or linux person, the VM is always there.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#25Earlier 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…
> I feel like there's a steady move to deprecate all system-customization on the platform. To avoid the android type mess Chromeos is and was always in the iron grip of Google. That is the way to keep things secure. And I am glad it is so. Once you expose important APIs to the main google account - there will be tons of crap ChromeAPPS (not android but the chrome apps) that will be difficult to supervise (i.e) repeat…
Unfortunately, Android runs in a VM now, too. In many tasks, I've gotten better performance from Linux apps than Android counterparts.
There's also the fact that the Android VM can't do certain things that Android phones and tablets can. As an example, files management in the Android VM is so bad that I lost access to standard access for months due to a bug...
Also, the Android environment is all the way back on version 11. If your theory is correct, that Google wants to move third-party developers to Android, then they're doing a terrible job of it. Android devs haven't and won't target all these outdated devices.
I believe Chromeos is becoming an enterprise/edu only platform. That would explain the (new) lack of interest in development and focus on security at the cost of all functionality. This is a new development and wasn't "always" the case as you claim, because many of these apis are as old as Chromeos itself (10-ish years).
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I feel like there's a steady move to deprecate all system-customization on the platform. To avoid the android type mess Chromeos is and was always in the iron grip of Google. That is the way to keep things secure. And I am glad it is so. Once you expose important APIs to the main google account - there will be tons of crap ChromeAPPS (not android but the chrome apps) that will be difficult to supervise (i.e) repeat…
Unfortunately, Android runs in a VM now, too. In many tasks, I've gotten better performance from Linux apps than Android counterparts. There's also the fact that the Android VM can't do certain things that Android phones and tablets can. As an example, files management in the Android VM is so bad that I lost access to standard access for months due to a bug... Also, the Android environment is all the way back on vers…
I would assume google uses Android to just help get onboard chromeos (example: netflix app etc). You want android devs to handle the outside chrome. No thanks. Whether it is A11 or not a large majority does not care. It is only power enthusiasts that need latest A13 in chromebook. For the rest, not at all.
See they are learning a lesson from iOS. Keep tight control - at whatever cost. The same complaints about file management is there in iPad but devs have no option.
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#27Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#28Earlier 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…
Also worth noting that there is Chromium OS https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/
Re: Developing on and for Chromebooks is a terrible experience
#29I 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 m…
I got a framework chromebook and I'm very happy with it. The only thing that would be better would be running chromeos on a fast system with no fan, but that doesn't exist.
An apple silicon/arm is the ideal laptop form factor since it's fast and has no fan, but apple won't let google use that as a building block of course. I have tried running x86 binaries on my mac studio, it's dead slow as others have reported with ubuntu; I tried an arm ubuntu image and it ran at native speed. I couldn't immediate figure out how to get an arm chromeos vm to try to run on it.