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Comment by Kluny | Hacker News Reader

Do you replace Chrome OS with Ubuntu, dual boot, or run it in a VM? Do you spend most of your time in Chrome OS or in Ubuntu?

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So with Crouton, you don't actually dual boot. It's more like a VM, but it uses the same kernel that Chrome OS uses, so it's more like Docker than Virtualbox.

I have a cheap 11" Acer C720 and I probably use it more than my Macbook Pro. I have command line only Ubuntu installed, and the result is a tab I can open to have a full linux shell, much like how you would use a macbook. For all intents and purposes, it's the same OS, but it's not.

A few things I particularly like are battery like (maybe 8 hours?), no fans, matte screen, and macbook like keyboard and trackpad. Also Chrome OS maps the F1/F2 keys to forward/backward keys in Chrome, which I use all the time surprisingly.

All in all, I would highly recommend a Chromebook. For development it's great. If you don't want to use Crouton, a linode server you can SSH into is just as good as a macbook really. Now that they will be able to run all Android apps, it's even more tempting.

> It's more like a VM, but it uses the same kernel that Chrome OS uses, so it's more like Docker than Virtualbox.

I'm amused by this explanation, because I grew up doing chroot before virtualization took off and obviously before Docker.

Feeling old.

I don't know if it's age really. I've explained, to developers well older than me things like "well, this practice is bad because <reasons> here's an article from <before I was born>" or having to translate old fundamental concepts into their latest hip implementations. "this use calls less for virtualization and more for something like a Chroot..." "what?" "Sorry I mean like a Jail... cgroups...? LXC...? sigh Docker." "Oh! Yeah, that makes sense. nods as if they understand"

The funny thing is, I'm not old. I'm under 30. I just started young, on my own, and fell in with some more experienced sysadmin crowds.

>No fans

I think you must be mistaken on this. I own a C720, and there is a fan in it.

You can see it in the upper left of this picture:

https://www.chromium.org/_/rsrc/1381990807648/chromium-os/de...

I don't actually do any of those three. Underneath ChromeOS is a *nix variant. So Crouton actually allows one to change the root directory to something else [like away from the meaningless root that ChromeOS puts you in, essentially in a Downloads directory, and to the actual root of the machine].

In practice, this means that if I hit a three key chord, then I flip over to a regular xfce, and if I hit another three key chord I go back to ChromeOS.

I do all web-browsing in ChromeOS. I do all programming and textediting in xfce. Or rather in vim, using my standard vim setup. [I'm a mathematician, so I do somewhat minor programming and lots and lots of LaTeX writing].

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