Earlier quoted context omitted.
"but for the absence of solid developer tools, I'd have stayed forever." Are you saying that Arch or Ubuntu and everything that runs on them aren't enough for you? Or that crouton hadn't evolved far enough at the time? These days you can run crouton in a window or a tab within ChromeOS. Launch an xterm or IntelliJ or whatever each into their own windows, displaying within ChromeOS. I'd say that the 2015 Pixel (plus c…
Crouton in a window doesn't really work so well --- on my Asus Flip it frequently forgets to redraw the window after changes, which makes it nigh unusable. I haven't tried rootless mode, though. I'll agree with you about Chromebooks for developers, though (well, if you like doing everything from text mode, which I do). My ARM-based Flip is a lovely machine. Cheap, ultraportable, completely silent, ludicrous battery l…
It can do AS on X in a window or tab, or as a separate desktop. The last mode seems to require the two systems to handing over low level control of the hardware to each other, whereas the first two modes are more seamless. So yes trying the other approach might solve the redraw problem.
Yes, for text mode only things are even easier. The "crosh window" app (plus tmux, etc) is all I need to perfectly happy with Crouton.