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Comment by brunoluiz | Hacker News Reader

I don't have one, but I am bit curious how is a development workflow on a Chromebook. Do you know any article which shows it?

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I run Debian in a chroot on my Asus Flip via Crouton. It works brilliantly. Chrome manages the hardware, power management, networking, etc; and then I can pull up a terminal and it's a full Debian system. There is X integration, but I don't use it, so I can't comment there.

If you don't want to install Crouton, it's possible to do some moderately clunky development using Chrome Developer Tool's little-known IDE feature; you can point it at a local directory and edit files there. That allows HTML/JS development directly on an unmodified Chromebook, including the integrated debugger. It's not brilliant, though. If you want to go that route your best bet is a cloud development platform (which requires a network connection, of course).

I wonder if its possible to port vscode to run inside Chrome as a downloadable webapp?

I discussed this here this morning. There's a few roadblocks to this:

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1031

I use Caret[0] where my project is saved in an SFTP folder on a server, so it's kept off the machine in any case (and guessing you can set up some kind of deployment hook from it?). If you've not tried Caret, do give it a go, really speedy and whilst not as good as VSCode, makes development on a Chromebook (and work laptops that don't let you install 3rd party programmes, but do allow Chrome extensions ;) )

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/caret/fljalecfjcio...

I do the exact same thing (Caret with SFTP folder) on my chromebook for lightweight dev (when I only have access to my chromebook at a coffee shop and only have to do some light work, not really deep stuff). Caret is passable but VSCode or even Sublime are better. My main issue though is flakey internet (which is often the case in coffee shops that are not starbucks) makes life really hard. Connections to the SFTP folder keeps dropping, etc.

I've been waiting forever for a good local Git client for chromebooks but it seems like there's just no one working on it. The few that are on the chrome app store haven't been updated since 2013-14 and are full of bugs and don't actually even work. If one existed, I would be able to clone a repo locally and at least edit code in a stable way even when internet is flakey.

I don't understand why people run Linux on a Chromebook. The point of a Chromebook is ChromeOS. If you're running Linux it's just another Linux computer.

I develop on a Chromebook some times. I use a DigitalOcean VPS, using tmux + vim to code and ChromeOS to debug.

Because i wanted a cheap ($250) semi-disposable laptop to use when travelling. Has 1080p screen; great battery life; HDMI output (to present at conferences). I use it mainly on long plane flights (3-23 hours), in hotel rooms and at conferences.

Why shouldn't I buy a chromebook and put linux on it?

Because there are Linux sellers selling laptops on that price range.

I got an Asus delivered with Linux for 300 €.

I couldn't find any at the time; especially ones with long battery life and a 1080p screen. Also 300 euro is more than $250.

Do you have links to models you'd recommend?

I got the Eee 1512B with 8GB and is still able to hold about 6h working time, which is plenty of time for my plane travels.

Sure it doesn't have 1080p, but most apps aren't able to use it anyway.

Which Chromebook model are you using? That does sound good for $250

Acer Chromebook 14 http://amzn.to/2oICxpa I bought it last year

Thanks!

It's totally fine if you use Linux with whatever hardware you want. It's just a bit frustrating for a Chromebook user when discussion of Chromebooks is dominated by people who don't use ChromeOS. As though the hardware is the thing, but it's not the thing.

I guess it is the thing though if that's the dominating motivation?

I use the C201 because it's a cheap computer that supports Libreboot and, using ARM, avoids issues with Intel ME:

https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel

I replaced ChromeOS with a fully free Debian system.

I'm still flabbergasted by how we (all) could let Intel ME happen. It's, imo, one of the real Damocles' swords above our heads.

This in itself proves one of my previous points, Intel has no serious competition, even the big industrial players can't bend Intel.

When I did develop on a Chromebook (I switched to a Dell XPS 13), crouton was an attractive option since it let you stay in ChromeOS most of the time, while popping out a lightweight Linux environment when you needed it. It got even better when it supported xiwi running in a window, so that the chroot could look just like another Chrome tab. You could even run just one app out of the chroot in its own window, so it was not uncommon that I'd have all of my other stuff in Chrome windows, with SublimeText from the linux chroot running in its own window as my code editor.

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