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Comment by chrisfarms | Hacker News Reader

As surprised as I am to say this; I think Google could steal a large chunk of the developer market overnight with some slight changes to Chrome OS.

I needed an emergency machine last week (My 2011 Pro finally died), and I opt'd for a £200 Chromebook (EDGAR), thinking all I need is a browser and a terminal right this second and I'd worry about what Apple is doing later.

A solid Linux laptop with working sleep, working wifi, great battery life. Tad underpowered but hey it's £200. I'm _really_ impressed.

If Google relaxed the constraints a little on the OS, or supported a Crouton-like workflow for containers without having to stick it in dev-mode, they could make A LOT of developers very happy.

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I can't recommend Dell's Developer Edition laptops enough. I switched from a MacBook Pro about 6 months ago and haven't run into any of the usual obnoxious Linux-on-a-laptop headaches like sleep or wifi.

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...

I'm leaning toward the XPS but I keep hearing that the trackpad is pretty shitty. Can you confirm/deny that?

It's not as good as the force trackpad on the current MBP, but it's not bad, either. My only real gripe is that the physical click is a little heavy & loud. I'd put it in the same ballpark with prior generations of MBPs that physically clicked. You can always go play with one at a Micro Center or other box store.

Don't you get a real, regular Linux distribution when using Crouton?

You do, and xiwi (X11 in a window) is almost magic in letting me spawn a proper terminal emulator integrated with ChromeOS's window manager (Aura?).

...but it feels like a bit of a hack. I have to have the laptop in dev mode and there's a slight fear that an automatic update might prevent the chroot from working, or that my stateful downloads directory might disappear.

My thought was that ChromeOS is kinda where OS X 10.0 was... a great UI on top of a great base that just works. That's what drove many of us to Apple when we got bored of re-configuring linux, it's what made many of us recommend Apple to friends/family.... Apple have dropped the ball, Google is in a pretty good place to pick it up.

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