Hacker News Reader

Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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...

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com