I'm typing this on a Pixel running Ubuntu 14.04. Nearly everything works perfectly, and the hardware, as you probably know, is superb. If you're going to be staring at a screen all day you should consider getting the best one you can afford. As far as I know the best screens are in the Pixel and the "retina" screens from Apple. The Pixel, however, at least the original model that I got (used), has a pretty bad image persistence problem.

I tried Crouton and found it too awkward, so deleted ChromeOS and installed Ubuntu from an SD card set up in the normal way. Things will not work right out of the box. You need to make a recovery SD card in case you accidentally drain your battery:

http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo...

Do not skip this step, as it is possible for a crash can put you in the same state - it happened to me.

Your machine will probably reboot when you try to suspend/resume. The fix varies depending on the kernel/Pixel model; I fixed this by adding

tpm_tis.force=1 tpm_tis.interrupts=0

to /boot/grub/grub.cfg (and remembering to run update-grub).

You need to add an .xmodmaprc file to your home directory to get the hardware volume, etc. keys to work. After rebooting, sometimes this doesn't "take" unless you log out of the desktop and back in a couple of times. I can suspend by running "pm-suspend" and wake up by opening the lid, but suspending by simply closing the lid doesn't work. I'm used to that, as it was the same deal with my Ubuntu Thinkpads. You can probably fix that if you care enough. While you're setting up your keymappings you can also change the "search" key to cntrl, etc.

I plan to put up a more detailed guide on my website eventually (it has an Atom feed).

The Pixel is a pleasure to use all day (but gives me only five hours of battery). Don't be put off by the small SD drive, you can use the convenient SD slot to supplement that.