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Comment by canuckintime | Hacker News Reader

I'm still amazed that Google hasn't released their own IDE on ChromeOS and Android yet. Their Pixel series are lovely premium devices with a Unix underpinning that could become the default option for developers

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Last time I tried to use a Chromebook for development (using crouton to have a proper unix environment), you had to enable developer mode. This presented a 30-second splash screen at boot saying 'press space', where pressing space would wipe your drive, resetting the machine. The machine also does this if the drive becomes too full. I can't go back until they sort these issues.

This may be a bit offtopic but relavant for anyone without a chromebook. A open-source recompiled Chromium OS is available for _third-party_ laptops/desktops - called cloudready OS. This is very good for older machines. https://www.neverware.com

I am not affiliated, just a happy user with 8GB RAM thinkpad!

How in the world 8GB RAM in a Thinkpad is not enough for proper operating system? On my x230 with 8GB I am successfully running Ubuntu Mate. I've spent couple days doing dev on it (usual LAMP/LEMP web stack + Sublime + browsers) and I was perfectly happy with that. Even my full time, desktop machine have 8GB RAM (but better CPU than thinkpad) and runs Ubuntu 16.10

Some of us prefer the simplicity of ChromeOS.

I use Ubuntu 16.10 on a 2011/2012 i3 desktop, which was average by then, not top of the bill. To me it seems like 16.04 is a lot slower than 14.04, and I regret upgrading. Same with a Lenovo Flex laptop - it has only 2GB RAM. Since 16.04 it has performance problems. Running Firefox with Javascript is too much, or two apps at the same time grinds it to a halt.

Does it have an SSD or spinning rust?

Side note: I actually tested the Intel builds on an old HP laptop running ArnoldTheBat's chromium builds. Works very well actually!

Backups! Crouton makes those easy, but so does e.g. rsync.

Also, CTRL-D short-circuits the scary splash screen.

I know about the shortcut, but I couldn't lend the machine to anybody. Backups, yes, but it's still a massive faff reprovisioning the machine.

I agree, I don't know why they make it so easy to wipe everything. I was thinking of getting my son (8) a chromebook, install minecraft on it, basic Linux, etc., but that splash screen makes it a non-starter. It's almost guaranteed that a little brother will get his hands on it and wipe the drive within a week.

Likely because they never intended "developer mode" to be "develop on the device" mode, but more a "test the web app" mode.

ChromeOS is first and foremost a web terminal. That Google recently started introducing Android apps on there do not really change this, as most Android apps are just frontends for web services.

I just picked up an Acer Chromebook 11 for $60, have been using crouton with no problems (besides hardware limitations). Great little guy for on the go programming. Like someone else said, I just hit ctrl-d and I'm logged in within 30 seconds. IMO developer mode seems like a nice way to keep standard users fenced in.

> IMO developer mode seems like a nice way to keep standard users fenced in.

The whole reason why the BBC funded the original micro was to end the distinction between developer and standard user – everyone should at least understand it.

A notion that has gone 180 since then. Even the big FOSS projects seems to operate under the mentality that there are two groups, the developers (aka the people involved with the project) and the users (aka sheeple).

Everyone should understand it but most of the time that isn't the case. And I would argue that most "advanced" users (especially on Windows) are just following instructions from online posts and really have no idea what they're doing. If something doesn't work as expected, they either ask for next steps online with extreme vagueness, or take it upon themselves to start messing with system files and settings, digging their hole even deeper.

Giving users full control like that will only result in a greater need for customer support. We've all seen the stupidity of some of these "tales from tech support" customers. While I agree with you that everyone should at least understand the computer and OS that they're using, I also understand Google's move in creating a separation of users, especially during Chrome OS's infancy.

The problem isn't that I will wipe my machine, but that, say, my toddler will (she has twice), or a well-meaning spouse who sees a problem with a messages that says how to fix it.

Yes, I can keep the machine put away out of reach, etc, but that's not necessary with any other laptop I have. The user login on my Windows 10 machine is enough to prevent my 3-year-old from button-mashing her way to a wiped drive. Not so on a chromebook.

Yup. I had my mom over and while I was sleeping she was looking for a computer to use. She recognized the chrome book, because they have one at home.

She opened it, saw a screen saying "press spacebar" and she complied.

Was I angry at her? Yes. Very. But when I realized that even I could have easily made that mistake I stopped using the chrome book with crouton. Too high risk.

Ah, gotcha. Don't know much about those troubles as a single student!

As well as the aforementioned CTRL-D shortcut, you can change the amount of time the splash screen is displayed... although it does require opening up the Chromebook (to set a jumper) and then writing a modified BIOS to the Chromebook:

https://johnlewis.ie/neutering-the-developer-mode-screen-on-...

Not for the faint of heart, but at least you only need to do it once...

Do you mean it was wiped when switching to developer mode? Or is this screen and behavior presented after switching to developer mode?

After you've switched it on, it displays the splash screen at every boot, with a warning message and instructions to press space to make the warning go away:

http://blog.codestarter.org/content/images/2014/12/tumblr_in...

FFS Google.

That developers mode thingy is starting to look more and more like some kind of fig leaf towards the FOSS world.

The fact you can't turn this off at all is the problem. Even, as has been mentioned elsewhere, if you set jumpers to flash the BIOS, you can only reduce it down to two seconds!

Heh, seems like a "slight" improvement on their big name Chromebook that would revert back to "normal" mode if the battery ran out. This because there was no separate BIOS battery, so it would reset if the main battery zeroed out. This in turn locking people out of developer mode.

You can hide the dev mode screen, or disable the functionality completely, with a firmware update.

It's a very common (and safe) procedure. There's a good write up at https://wiki.galliumos.org/Firmware

What I would like to see, and they're effectively doing this already by allowing the Play Store on Chromebooks, is a sandbox INSIDE the encrypted area, but outside of the signed code.

Basically, an official container support in user space that once you enter developer mode allows you to keep the security features you have currently (signed boot-code checking, encryption), but also a restricted container that allows for native apps like this.

Then we could get rid of the Developer Mode splash screen, or at least allow it to be disabled by choice.

I like this idea. Official container support would be a game changer, especially for those unnerved by going off the beaten path.

I really want to see this on Android as well. Having user namespace support on carrier builds would go a long way for this.

I've been think about how this would work. Something like the Samsung ultra powersaving mode. A basic lock screen and dialer with 911 support, then the running environment could be swapped between full Android, Ubuntu or anything else.

Could have sworn that you already get apps that set up a Debian chroot, complete with a SDL based X11 desktop even.

I actually just asked my friend that works at Google about this the other day. It turns our they have an internal tool called CIDER that is exactly this. A great IDE for Chrome books that lots of people at Google use.

No surprise there. I have the impression that their Pixel line of products is first and foremost for dogfooding their staff. Because Google has long been one of Apple biggest customers, right up there with Facebook. This i suspect because most web dev courses got their start in media/art, not compsci. And you can sometimes tell with how even official Google apps on Android lag their iOS equivalent in features, or bring over iOS-isms.

Clojure Interactive Development Environment that Rocks?

https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider

They came in with Chrome-dev-editor and then dropped it again. https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/06/dart-github-chrome-dev-ed...

I use it on my Chromebook quite a bit. It makes for a reasonable on-the-go environment running Node on the Linux crouton side and editor, output on the ChromeOS side

It's a bit clunky, but you can pull up Chrome Developer Tools on a ChromeOS device, create a workspace in Downloads, and with a bit of fiddling persuade DevTools to map the files directly to disk. Now you can use DevTools as a pretty good HTML/JS/CSS IDE with debugger integration, editing the files directly in the DevTools window with proper syntax highlighting etc.

AFAIK there isn't any way to get VCS integration (but I have a faint memory that DevTools extensions are possible?), but it's a great deal better than nothing.

...and, of course, if you dev unlock the device, you can install Crotoun and get a full Debian system side-by-side with ChromeOS. Then you can do what you like.

I managed to get a setup going like that, with Caret and a mapped SFTP folder. Used it for a little while, but really wasn't a fun experience, and if I'm honest, neither was installing Linux. I'm guessing their vision is for a Cloud9 style future, but since we're not really there yet for most things, native development would be awesome.

Chrome Canary has improved workspace support, diffs, nodejs debugging and more editor improvements that make Dev Tools hard to beat as a HTML/JS/CSS IDE. See "Debugging The Web" session from the recent Dev Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF1luRD4Qmk

The ChromeOS and Android APIs have very little of UNIX.

Google could replace the kernel with something else and only OEMs would notice.

This is my go to dev environment right now, on Pixel 2. I rarely have to restart the machine, and I backup the linux chroot to the gigantic drive space they give you for free. So if anything ever did happen, I could reload like nothing. Also it's just fun.

Ive almost bought the pixel chromebook a number of times but it sounds like a mess to get working for developers.

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