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nickjj

I run Linux on a slightly modified Chromebook. It seems solid to me, but I never owned a MBP.

It has all of the things I care about:

- 1080p IPS display (13.3" screen)

- SSD

- 4GB of RAM

- Fast enough to handle real work loads (lots of browser tabs, running large Rails apps in Docker, streaming music, etc.)

- SD card and USB ports

The whole thing was $350 USD and it's under 3 pounds.

Details are at: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...

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I run ChromeOS on an unmodified Chromebook, primarily for security reasons. With the situation as it is on the net, I feel more comfortable that way. Slightly newer machine, so the specs are higher (m5 CPU, 8GB of ram... still 1080p screen.)

That doesn't mean it's only usable for browsing, though. It's actually a surprisingly powerful device. I'm on the dev channel, which although occasionally buggy, also improves integration with Android a bit. It's got:

- F.lux/redshift equivalent: Night mode. It's built in, but only in dev for now.

- General Linux stuff: Termux. That's a linux-distro-as-android-app. Debian-based.

- Remote shell: SSH-in-a-window-or-tab, mosh. Or Termux.

- Remote desktop: Well, VNC, but there are tons of options here.

- Video player: mpv-android. Much better than the built-in player.

- Writing: Aint, or Google Drive. The latter does work quite well offline, the former is a good bit faster though.

- Development... Termux comes with the usual suspects; python, clang, node.js and so on all work. Can't say I've taken advantage, but it's nice to know that it's there if I need it.

All of that without flipping the development switch on the chromebook. About the only thing I'm missing is graphics support for Termux, but my needs are simple, and Emacs runs as well in a terminal as in a window.

The low-res and low amount of RAM make it a completely different league compared to an MBP. Not sure which chromebook you have, buy they also tend to have quite smaller SSDs.

Generally, chromebooks are modern netbooks (not saying that's a bad thing, just different), and not really comparable to an MBP.

You can upgrade the SSDs on them to whatever you need (not all of them, but just the models that have a pluggable SSD card). It was $50 for 128GB, but you can go much higher.

Also, the resolution is really nice. 1080p on a 13" machine is plenty of PPI.

Sure a MBP has retina, but at the end of the day you're probably running a 13" MBP at 1680x1050 which gives you less screen real estate than the Chromebook. The only difference is, things will be liquid smooth looking.

That's a great guide, thanks! When I went through the process a few years ago, it would have been really nice to have. Plus GalliumOS wasn't around then.

No problem. It was a fun experience to set it all up. I am still using the machine a lot today. I wrote that guide almost 1 year ago to this day.

I don't think I would have tried it without GalliumOS. It's surprisingly polished.

My mbp has 2560x1600 screen, effectively making 1080p quite bad in comparison.

I had 4k screens on < 14" laptops and I prefer 1080p. Pixel density is enough for my eyes, no scaling issues and battery runs longer.

This is an unfair comparison. macOS doesn't run at that resolution out of the box. Your max effective resolution is 1680x1050. Even a 15" rMBP has a max effective resolution of 1920x1200. So, 1080p is plenty competitive for dev work. Now, if all you care about is the smoothness of HiDPI, then your point is valid, but most of us care more about how much code we can fit on screen than how smooth the font looks.

If a high-res screen is critical, check out the HP Chromebook 13 G1 which has a 3200x1800 screen. You can find the 8GB RAM model for around $400 refurbished. Comes with ChromeOS but you can also install Linux distros via Crouton.

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