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Comment by fareesh | Hacker News Reader

Are there any good reasons why a developer would buy a Chromebook over some other laptop, unless they are developing for the Chromebook itself?

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MacBooks are out for me now that they have the touchbar and bad keyboard. I currently use a ThinkPad and it's pretty good, but the touchpad is mediocre at best.

I think a ChromeBook with really first class support for Linux apps is very compelling. I run Linux in a VM on Windows 10 on my ThinkPad and it's a great setup. A ChromeBook would be a very similar setup but probably with better native OS integration (for example they are exposing the Linux filesystem in ChromeOS's file browser) and this would all be a first class use case supported by Google.

You mean pixelbook, $300 chromebooks would obviously be of poor build quality; although i am not sure of the hardware quality of pixelbook either. For me a thinkpad works pretty well for a linux machine.

Yeah I am thinking mostly nicer ChromeBooks. But the nicer ChromeBooks compete quite well with ThinkPads, price-wise.

FWIW, I have an Acer ChromeBook I bought for $99 brand new on Black Friday a couple of years ago. I have about 20 laptops at my disposal (including ThinkPads and MacBook Pros) but I use this one the most. The build quality is surprisingly good and the battery lasts forever. I installed Linux on it after replacing the firmware, but I'm excited that Crostini might make this unnecessary on other ChromeBooks (and maybe even this model). A very important bonus of Crostini is that it will not be necessary to put the machine in developer mode.

I have a Dell Chromebook 13 and the build quality is fantastic. It's my favorite laptop out of last gen Macbook Air, Dell XPS 13, Thinkpad, and Razer Blade. The keyboard on it is the only one that doesn't hurt my fingers to type on.

A lot of the lower-end Chromebooks are surprisingly well built. Education is a huge market for Chromebooks, so durability is important. My Acer Chromebook is mostly plastic, but there are hefty metal hinges and a metal backplate for the LCD. I've dropped it several times and it just seems to bounce. The keyboard and trackpad aren't exceptional, but are perfectly pleasant to use. The only major downside is the screen, which is a fairly dim and low-res TN panel. Still, you really can't complain for the price.

I have to disagree, surprisingly. I've got an Acer Chromebook 14 which is all aluminum, very thin/light, 14" IPS 1080p display, wonderful trackpad and a pretty solid keyboard. All for under $300.

Just got my parents a $500 Samsung Chromebook, and the build quality is incredible.

Macbooks continue to look less and less appealing to me, if Chromebooks somehow got Adobe CC, I'd switch immediately.

There are excellent CBs below $300. I have purchased several refurb Acer 14s for $200.

What about the XPS 13?

I have been using a Chromebook as my daily driver for nearly 2 years now.

Most of the time, I'm either at home or at work, so I just remote log into my development systems. I, personally, don't really need to lug around my entire development environment, though I used to be in that school of thought.

So, given that I really just need SSH, a decent Chromebook is cheap (as others mentioned), and can have a decent keyboard with long battery life. The one I have is around 1kg, so it is very "handy", and I carry it everywhere, as I would have a notepad in earlier days.

I'm trying to setup something similar - do you use Wake on LAN to turn the computer on? Or do you leave it on? Do you have a static IP or do you use some kind of dynamic DNS service?

No static ip or dyndns needed if you use autossh.

My workstations are on 24/7 (the one at home runs some other services like a media server) with static IP addresses.

Cheap and lightweight, but of reasonable quality. You'll get Linux out of the box. Effortless updates. Lots of battery life - my Chromebook came with 13 hours of battery and it is a few years old machine at this point.

It can make sense if you're developing for Linux -- for instance web apps that will run on Linux in production.

It can also make sense if you like physical function keys and/or a touch screen larger than a function key row. :)

I used a Chromebook Pixel with Crouton very happily for a year. Granted I spend 95% of my time in Emacs and a web browser.

Sadly ... driver Support. The main reason for me - standby and resume allways work and not only mostly ...

Take a look at System76. They make Linux laptops and have full hardware/driver support out of the box.

https://system76.com/

I think I did checked them out. But I have a special use case, need Touchscreen, long batery life, rugged, small, lightweight ( ...for hiking and working Outdoor) Asus C213 was a perfect fit. Otherwise there are only windows devices avaiable with terrible linux Driver support at the moment.

The Chromebook Pixel has a 3:2 screen. As far as I know only Huawei and Microsoft sell 3:2 laptops so it doesn't have much competition in that regard.

The Samsung Chromebook Plus/Pro also have 3:2 screens, same size and resolution as the Google Pixelbook (probably the same display panel). Though those are also Chrome OS devices, of course.

Forgot to mention the new HP Chromebook X2 also shares the same display specs: https://chromeunboxed.com/hp-unveils-worlds-first-detachable...

Here are my own reasons:

1. The security model is fantastic compared to the alternatives. DIY security is an endless distraction these days unless it's your full-time job. I am concerned that the team may not be able to keep things so secure as the complexity of Chrome OS increases, but as a starting point it's still the most secure commercial OS out there.

2. Little to no setup. Boot it up, log in, and you're ready. (And now, I guess, install whatever Linux apps you want.) This makes it easy to recover from hardware failure, even if you're on the road. Just go take one off the shelf, no worries about installation, configuration, etc.

3. Disposability. Most Chromebooks are incredibly cheap. If it breaks or if you lose it, it's not the end of the world.

4. Easy, safe sharing. If someone needs to borrow a computer to check their email, you can log out and hand it to them. Your stuff is securely encrypted, and the system is hardened against compromise. This may not be a big deal for everyone, but it brings me great peace of mind!

You can install GalliumOS [1] on a Chromebook for a full Debian-based Linux experience. I dual boot mine for certain apps I can't run under ChromeOS, but I'll be perfectly happy to stay in Chrome land once this Linux app thing gets pushed out to my chrmebook. For the most part, I'm doing heavy lifting on other machines I remote log into (graphical or shell). I've got LXC and KVM scripts [2] to spin up virtual Windows, MacOS, or Linux machines as dev environments on any Linux host, and then connect using ssh, x2go, or Chrome Remote Desktop. With this setup, I can comfortably do without a beefy laptop, and don't need to worry about taking proprietary/sensitive data through an airport.

[1] https://galliumos.org/

[2] https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders

No need now with support built in and have much better security versus using GalliumOS.

Aesthetics of the Chromebook Pixel

One device to rule them all?

The promise of Ubuntu Convergence and Windows Continuum on a single piece of hardware, solving the "app gap" with Android support - the best of the web, Android and one's choice of Linux desktop.

An ultrabook/iPad substitute - "power users" requiring a 32GB Core i7 desktop replacement might look elsewhere, naturally.

Security.

It's a cheap more portable 2nd laptop. I much prefer it over a tablet. While the screen resolution on mine is pretty bad (768p 11"), I actually bring it around with me and am able to do elixir development with Termux.

It has been an inexpensive and reliable crouton linux box.

The hardware support has been really nice, as a lot of the usual linux fiddling required to support monitors, etcetera has been much easier with the intermediate chromeOS layer.

Chromebooks are cheap.

I wouldn't call $999 cheap

I needed a machine to ssh from and have a browser. $250 acer chromebook with crouton mostly works.

This is not my primary machine however. I only use it at home to ssh into my desktop once in a while.

On this price range, are there any advantages of using a Chromebook rather than purchasing an old refurbished business laptop such as x230?

They seem to be going for the same price range.

because x230 is ugly pos, heavy, big while buttons still feel cramped and has bad battery life (compared to any new chromebooks)

I daily a x220. It's perfect.

Same here; lot of battery life too under Ubuntu/i3.

With the 9 cell I get easily 15 hours while developing. Not sure which Chromebooks you are talking about. But I prefer the x220 over the 230. Haven't tried the 240 which is now starting to get cheap second hand here.

Same as at any price range: security and managed updates.

Weight, battery life, fan usage

not sure what the battery life on x230 is. I usually get 6-7 hours atleast on my current chromebook.

Besides this was an impulse purchase. I was tired of my home laptop and wanted something so I went to best buy and purchased it within half an hour. I can't say the same for x230.

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