Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimmies | Hacker News Reader

I have a Dell Chromebook 13. Basically it is a Macbook Pro that happens to run Linux really well. I have used Thinkpads X (200, 201, 220) in the past, then switched to Chromebook C720, then this.

After you install John Lewis' ROM (basically a Coreboot build), it is an absolute dream, and everything worked out of the box, wifi, bt, 3d acceleration, suspend/resume, audio jack detection, you name it. Trackpad is really smooth, 1080p resolution IPS, the battery lasts 10 hours, never gets hot, fancy back-lit keyboard, has 8 philips screws in total to take it apart. Hell, it even has a TPM module so I can do those fancy ssh password-less logins (https://github.com/ThomasHabets/simple-tpm-pk11). If you really like the clit mouse, then this machine wouldn't cut it though. The speaker is kinda iffy and doesnt sound very nice, but nowhere bad.

It is also only 500USD, so that's another factor.

Pic: http://imgur.com/FRynGSw

View on HN

Acer c720 owner here - people tend to mock chromebooks all the time as glorified web browsers.

To some extend, that's true. Most things I do that aren't development related are done on a web browser. It's absolutely perfect for that. Starts up extremely quickly, very light, long battery, lovely.

For very occasional dev purposes, I simply used crouton, which works insanely well. I can even use sshfs and go back to ChromeOS and have the drive still mounted. Highly recommend the c720, or whatever is the more recent equivalent.

Oh I wiped Chrome and installed Linux directly on the SSD (upgraded it to 128gb). It works well too, Chromebooks are designed to work well with Linux :)

Now mainline Linux kernel support is so good to the point that you don't need to hack on it to get it to work.

which distro do you use? i see KDE in the picture.

I use Kubuntu.

For C720s, I like distroshare.com. It has a number of Linux distros that have been optimized for the C720. I'll actually be installing their distro of ElementaryOS on a C720 tonight for a kid in our CoderDojo group.

That does sound very very nice.

How's the screen like? Do you see pixels when reading text/code? If my calculations are correct, the Dell Chromebook has 169PPI, while the MBP 13 has a 227 PPI display.

I don't see pixels, but it probably doesn't mean you won't see it. It is a very nice screen, however, there might be bleedings - less or more depending on your luck. My girlfriend has a Macbook Air 11 inches and the Dell screen is another league. It is matte too, so it has different characteristics compared to the Macbook pro, and what is better depends on your taste, but I like matte screens better.

About DPI I would love to have the MBP screen, so I can do the 2x DPI mode, however, ~1.5x scaling for 1920x1080 is not bad at all. KDE scales odd DPIs really well, so I don't have a problem with it generally speaking. After you set the DPI on Control Panel/System settings, everything scales seamlessly. I have yet to find something that makes me frustrated in terms of app scaling.

> Basically it is a Macbook Pro

Without the display... which is a major reason why people purchase a Macbook Pro.

I've got an old Samsung 550 chromebook that I've done the same to. It's a highly under-rated dev machine in my opinion. I installed Gallium on mine.

if only they had a normal capacity HDD ...

The SSD is replaceable and standard-sized for modern computers, so I wouldn't say it is extremely bad. You can get a 512GB one now for $200.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLTPSKM

How easy it to replace? Can't find any guide online.

Undoing 8 screws or so would expose the whole mainboard with all components. https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/3m5wil/dell_chrom...

but if they catch on, most people won't replace it and they will be converting to the "cloud" ... and hardware with decent storage will become even more scarce (they even try to make the SD cards disappear for phones). Any laptop with less then 1TB of storage shouldn't be sold nowadays...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com