Hacker News Reader

Comment by pandeiro | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Chromebook Pixel. It seems like a pretty ideal machine for anyone whose primary development OS would be Linux.

Is there really nobody that went for the 16GB RAM version who can speak about the experience?

View on HN

I have the Pixel 2015 with 16GB, and run Archlinux on it. It's awesome. There were some of the normal Linux hiccups early on (sound/trackpad had some issues) but they seem to have been completely ironed out now. It's a fantastic machine. I wish they'd make a 15" version!

Doesn't it only have like 64GB of storage on it? How do you survive?

I've just purchased one, and to go along with it, I ordered a 128GB SD card and a 64GB USB C pen drive, bringing the total capacity to 256GB. The removable storage obviously won't be as fast, but I believe I can keep my daily work stuff and OS entirely on the SSD, and use the other storage for more extraneous things.

Obviously a 128GB SSD would've been preferable, but I think this strategy will work out.

OK. Sandisk SDs should support TRIM (provided the SD controller supports it too) so you could keep their performance up over the time.

I can confirm that Sandisk's 64GB microSD extreme pro is TRIMable on a raspberry pi.

I have a 128GB USB drive (a SanDisk Ultra Fit) that stays in the machine permanently, mounted to ~/ext, for anything non-dev-related. This has worked out fine for me--haven't ever really come close to filling up my drive, with the exception of a couple times when unused docker images built up over time. Definitely wouldn't recommend it if you're going to use the machine for photo backups or something, but as a secondary machine (I use a desktop 40% of the time) it's never really been an issue.

Thanks, this is exactly what I was hoping to hear. Curious if you dual boot Chrome/Arch or not; I plan to.

Nice! I'm running Arch only--ChromeOS seemed nice, but with storage at such a premium I'd rather just open up Chrome instead of having to partition the tiny drive. :)

Also: you probably want to use https://github.com/raphael/linux-samus to get started.

I have the lower-ram pixel experience and it has been awesome. Not having to deal with an OS desktop has been the icing on the cake. Digging through folders two times to copy something is not something I miss.

what do you mean about digging through folders twice?

Once to to open the source folder and once to open the destination.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com