* We MUST MAKE MORE 3:2 screens. Content is not wide, except video which I don't watch. Content is vertical. A 3:2 screen makes for an amazing laptop shape that is very well suited to the way humans view content, especially on the web.
* I've done computer security stuff for a while. Chromebooks are, by far, the best computer security model I've seen. Trusted boot, hashed root filesystems, fast updates that are as painless as possible (they even keep entered text in textareas on pages). They are, by default, secure enough that I would log into my core accounts on someone else's Chromebook (given a fresh reboot to ensure it wasn't in developer mode - physical firmware attacks aren't in the scope of things I worry about from people I know). Yet, I can twiddle a few keys and get one to be a properly nice Linux laptop with all sorts of great features, that also manages to "just work."
* OS resolution scaling is amazing. Eyes tired at the end of a day? A keystroke or two and you've rescaled the entire UI to match. Throw in the super high res, high def modes on the high DPI screens, and it's good for just about anything.
* Almost everything can be done on the web today, even if one probably shouldn't. I've used them as primary computers for many years, and I only rarely ran into something that I couldn't do (or couldn't do with Crouton and a Linux chroot environment). Those things included "a handful of Windows applications" (wine covers a lot) and "some kernel interfaces for Linux Internals classes" (the kernel simply lacks things that the OS doesn't need).
I know it's popular to hate Chromebooks, but if you're willing to toss them in developer mode for a few things, the value you get for your money, even at the high end, is legitimately impressive.
Fast updates are enabled by heavily locking in what user's are able to do with them. No exotic checks to be done.
I am not impressed by Chromebooks in those regards at all. Different strokes I suppose.
I might give you the screen, but to be honest, most of the time Chromebooks find their way to me it's because they're broken, and I'm everybody's computer guy of last resort due to high tolerance for frustration. All of them have had their screens or MOBO's rendered inoperable. Further, I philosophically reject anything that cannot be side loaded or is so locked down you can't load software onto it from external media.
Yes, security people may love that, but in reality, the entire point of processors is to run code. If I can't get my code to the processor that needs to run it without hostage negotiations, then that is not a useful machine to me. That is a niche PoS. Which all power to those who need it as such. Just isn't high on my list of things to actively purchase.
But they're not. You can, with the proper incantations of "fiddling keys you can't do remotely," boot anything you want on them. Just disable the secure boot stuff, which is a designed in, required feature for a Chromebook, and run whatever.
> Yes, security people may love that, but in reality, the entire point of processors is to run code.
If you let a computer, connected to the internet, run any code that is sent its way, it will eventually run mostly malware. Probably foreign, and while well behaved, still quite unwelcome.
What's fun is when you shut down that sketchy looking outbound traffic, and it turns out to be a new Windows telemetry service thing.
I also find, driving with kiddos through sketchy places on the internet and getting deliberately infected, so they learn what to look for, and letting your user's educate you on software they need/want also cuts down on the necessity for cargo cult infosec practices.
User's are not stupid, nor Lusers. Developers, programmer's, and the companies that pay them are not fond of repetition, expect you to only use their thing and bend over backwards for their convenience, and are often in it not for producing Quality software, but for the paycheck.
Admittedly, my practices don't scale to the point of being taught as general infosec practice, as I'm in it for the long haul for the hope that one day computer literacy will be as widely spread as regular literacy. We'll see if I live long enough. (Probably won't).
While I certainly don't hate Chromebooks, it seems that one can either buy inexpensive but underpowered devices (with slow ARM cores or low-end x86 Celerons) or devices on par with other notebooks - the Chromebook Pixel was certainly nice - but then you are not saving money compared to a regular notebook, even though the Windows (or macOS) tax doesn't apply.
The Chromebook security concept seems to be well implemented and can protect the user from a lot of typical problems. I'm still curious how much data Google collects from Chromebook users, though.
Resolution scaling is one of the most underappreciated technologies. My eyesight isn't really great and I'm using the macOS zoom feature often when I struggle to read text in a small font. It's great to see that ChromeOS implements something similar.
The trend of having to do everything on the web today (or using Electron apps) is still irritating. Contrary to expectations, this seems to result in more proprietary protocols (Slack, zoom, Teams, ...) instead of using open source or proprietary clients for open protocols. Well, this is probably yet another approach of solving a problem in CS by adding another level of abstraction ;-).
the concept of saving a lot of money, having 20hr+ battery life and no way to brick the computer (unless I really try) is kind of incredible, especially since this came out way before my patience ran out for the m1 macbooks.
I can still imagine someone wanting a premium chromeos experience since just having a logged in session of chrome is super powerful in being able to store your internet knowledge through bookmarks and history. While the trend of ignoring native apps accelerates it seems foolish to use something like windows these days and running it in chromeOS mode where accessing information or connected chat apps like slack might as well not be electron apps and be PWA's not running their own browser instance :/
The 4:3 screens of the iPads are really nice and Thunderbolt on the new devices allows for a large number of peripherals (if you buy a hub :)). Only Apple's "Magic" keyboards are far too expensive, but regular Bluetooth keyboards and mice should also work.
How can you talk about security if there is spyware on every Chromebook? I mean Google Chrome. Everything you do is recorded on Google servers, not only that but Chrome doesn't integrate any anti tracking protections like other browsers do (even Chromium based ones like Microsoft Edge), because it's the interest of Google to track the users. Not only that, but Google Chrome has a lot more security vulnerabilities than the competitors. I wouldn't say it's secure, and I would never do something on a Chromebook or in general in a Chrome browser, since it's like giving the access to Google itself.
Regarding the operating system, how can you trust more a system from Google than a system you build yourself? If you are paranoid you can buy a machine that supports Coreboot and even run your own trusted BIOS. If you don't want to take this seriously, you can setup your secure boot by creating your own keys, installing them in the firmware, and signing the kernel that you compile yourself. I don't know why you would have to be that paranoid but whatever, to me when I have an encrypted hard drive and my computer stays in my bag is more than enough.
> Almost everything can be done on the web today
You can't do programming in the browser, you can't do graphics, video editing, 3d modelling, you can't connect to a remote computer with RDP from a browser, you can't even have a full office suite in the browser (Office 365 in the browser, Google Docs, etc are limited), you can't play big games in the browser, you can't connect to a VPN from a browser, a webmail it's worse than using a desktop email client, you cannot have an advanced video/audio player in the browser (like VLC), etc.
Also, if internet doesn't work you are basically screwed, what do you do? Stare at the screen and play with the dinosaur game?
You have never built a system yourself. Neither has Google, for that matter, but they've gotten closer than you. The amount of code that runs on the average modern computer is probably too much to be read in a lifetime.
> You can't do programming in the browser
But you can on a Chromebook because you can use the Linux underneath.
> Also, if internet doesn't work you are basically screwed, what do you do? Stare at the screen and play with the dinosaur game?
You use the apps you have installed. I don't actually have a chromebook, but try to argue in good faith
When I say built a system obviously I don't mean writing the code. But deciding what programs install and how to configure them to build a system customized for your needs, secure and optimized. In fact Chrome OS is based on Gentoo Linux if I recall correctly, I installed Gentoo Linux a lot of times in the past.
> But you can on a Chromebook because you can use the Linux underneath.
But you aren't doing it in the browser. Running Linux inside Chrome OS has some limitations anyway.
> You use the apps you have installed.
On Chromebooks you cannot install applications locally. Unless you use a Linux Chroot, that is something advanced that most user don't do (and I would argue what is the point, just install Linux as the main operating system at this point). You are supposed to use only web applications, like Google Docs, that will not work without a connection available.
Also typically Chromebooks have little SSD space, because you are supposed to keep all your stuff in the cloud. Of course if you don't have internet the cloud doesn't work. I prefer having all my data locally on my computer, so I can access my files without needing a constant connection (and internet connections seems to know when you need them and decides to stop working exactly at that moment).
I have the option, in Chrome, to decide what is synced up to "the Google cloud." Are you asserting that this doesn't work - that if I turn off history/bookmark/etc sync, that this is still pushed up? I've not SSL intercepted a Chromebook to determine it, but I believe if you tell it not to do something, it won't.
You've got a bit of a solid anti-Google screed here, but you've not bothered to actually provide any evidence in favor of it.
> * Regarding the operating system, how can you trust more a system from Google than a system you build yourself?*
Because they hire an awful lot more security conscious people than I am, who I believe know their stuff pretty darn well.
As for your list of "You can't XYZ in a browser," you can put Linux in a chroot on a Chromebook in developer mode, so most of what you claim is either false through extensions, or false through Linux dev environments.
> Also, if internet doesn't work you are basically screwed, what do you do?
Well, I keep a local Ubuntu repo at home, so...
How can you be sure? Chrome is a proprietary software. Even if you don't sync up with your Google account, Google collects some usage statistics and similar things. Of course you can use Chromium (and Chromium OS) that is open source and thus doesn't contain that kind of trackers, but we were talking about Chrome OS.
> Because they hire an awful lot more security conscious people than I am, who I believe know their stuff pretty darn well.
They hire them to make Google interest, not yours. Google interest is to track you and make profit with your personal data. Your interest is having a system that preserves your privacy rights.
> you can put Linux in a chroot on a Chromebook in developer mode
Yes, you can, with some limitations. But at that point, why not installing Linux as the main OS on the Chromebook with Firefox as the default browser and throw away all the Google crap?
> Well, I keep a local Ubuntu repo at home, so...
Because you reinstall your software everyday? I install all the software I need when I install the operating system and I'm done. I can work without internet fine, of course I cannot do anything that requires a connection (emails, for example), but I can do everything else.
With browser based software if you don't have a connection you can't do anything. We evolved from the idea of mainframes to the personal computer, and then we are going back to mainframes with all the disadvantages that they have.
Did you hear about Qubes OS and Heads software?
Not a bad thing at all, I feel both have their place but they aren't comparable. Also you pretty much can't (shouldn't is more correct but when you do, you will feel it is closer to can't) run Qubes on the kind of low-end hardware many chromebooks ship with.
For the Macbook Air, the 16G version starts at 1079$ with education discount so roughly 1.5 more expensive (they explicitely choose the 16G version of the ACER, so the RAM shouldn’t be ignored IMO)
The thinkpad X13 at 16G of RAM is around 1380$ on amazon [0], so twice as much.
I don’t know the Acer spin 13, but if the screen is as good as Samsung’s one, it is well worth the price, especially as you usually get more battery life, and the chrome OS + android + linux mix is actually good. There are still rough edges, but the good parts largely outweigh those.
[0](https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-20T2003YUS-13-3-Noteb...)
The 16 GB version of the Macbook Air is more expensive, but I wonder how much more RAM a Chromebook needs for similar tasks since most of the software runs in Chrome instead of native?
I don't know US Thinkpad prices in detail, but you can buy the 16 GB RAM/512 GB SSD Thinkpad X13 AMD (no OS) for 1025 Eur (edu discount) including 19% VAT in Germany (https://www.lapstars.de/thinkpad-campus/x-serie-campus/x13-a...). This makes 861 Eur before tax (US$1042 at current conversion rates).
Of course, in the end it's all a matter of taste and use case and I'm happy to see more variety in the personal computing market.
Now, in CS we're one of the edge cases where booting VMs and parallel systems is part of the deal. In the Chromebook configuration it's actually 3 systems running at the same time so more RAM has a direct impact on performance.
(point taken on the Thinkpad price, I also think if we settle on a refurbished Chromebook, we could so the same for the Thinkpad and perhaps get it a bit lower)
My OS course covers operating systems from a system call perspective (POSIX, processes, synchronization and the usual things), but doesn't include kernel/device driver development, so we only had to cope with small differences in syscall behavior here.
Supporting Linux/WSL and macOS was a bit more problematic for the compiler backend exercise due to subtle differences in the supported assembler syntax and linker behavior between Linux and macOS as well as some students who might already own an M1 Mac.
Luckily, Rosetta happily executes the x86 binaries my students created using the macOS x86 crossassembler and -linker, so that turned out to be not a problem (I was hoping that a student would build an Aarch64 backend, but that didn't happen). None of my students seems to own a Pinebook or MNT Reform, so Linux/Arm was not a problem this year.
I hit the RAM ceiling too frequently to regularly use the Linux VM on this device for work. But then I discovered I could run code-server (https://github.com/cdr/code-server) on my Manjaro desktop gaming PC and it's become a perfect match. I get VSCode in-browser of ChromeOS on a cheap light thin client with a great touchpad and 3:2 screen. The battery lasts forever since I'm not running anything intensive directly on it. And I get more compute resources than any laptop could offer. A bit surprised I don't read more people taking this path.
Chromebooks are just polished Gentoo linux machines too that don't have nightmare headaches of driver incompatiblity issues. A M1 macbook would have to run linux in a VM (even docker containers) and deal with the overhead/tax of that issue. A chromebook will just run chroot/container stuff against the native kernel with very little overhead and maximum access to the machine's available memory.
Docker containers are problematic, of course, and I often wondered why macOS never implemented functionality similar to FreeBSD Jails or Solaris Zones. I see both as superior approaches compared to Docker, especially if you can combine them with ZFS.
The overhead for running VMs on a M1 Mac seems to be pretty reasonable, though, at least when you buy the 16 GB RAM version (though I also think it's overkill for something like Docker). Apple's hypervisor framework seems to work well and provides standard VirtIO devices to the guest OS, so many popular guest OSes that run on other virtualization solutions should be easy to adapt. The limited RAM expansion capabilities of the M1 Macs is probably the most problematic thing for these use cases.
EDIT:
It lost audio about 3 or 4 months after it was out of warranty, both out of the speakers and headphone jack. Left speaker failed first, then the right, then the headphone jack. I can only assume it was some sort of hardware fault, since sound no longer worked in ChromeOS either (and HDMI audio continued working in both). But good fucking luck getting such a thing fixed on a product like that from a company like that. Now I have a Dell XPS with a 1080p screen, which is good enough, particularly considering Dell has a much better reputation for support/repairs.
There was also the matter of the secure boot nonsense, where if you press the wrong key on boot, secure mode would be re-enabled. With secure boot re-enabled, the only image that would boot would be a ChromeOS installation image, which would wipe your linux install. So you couldn't re-flip that secure boot bit without losing your linux installation. This bit me once, before I got better about regular backups..
My MacBook Pro from 2012 still receives updates and works a charm.
However battery life, ruggedness, 3:2 display, small size etc (note: not thickness, I don't actually care about that, just the other dimensions so it easily fits in a backpack) are all features I do look for in a laptop, and Chromebooks usually have that in spades (stuff that's intended to be handed out to high school kids is probably pretty indestructible).
If Apple releases an 11" MacBook Air for a reasonable price that would be pretty compelling for me too though, knowing I do have the processing power should want it (and the very high dpi display).
So the question is, can you get through the Master's program with a brand new $250 chromeook? I'd say yes- you basically need to set it up as a remote coding machine. Georgia Tech (and most other universities with decent graduate programs) provide access to educational and research computing clusters these days. Also, Google Collab is your friend, especially during the assignment deadlines when those clusters will be occupied by other students.
A laptop with a DGPU within that price range is mostly a NVIDIA MX-series GPU.
But you can get a good NVIDIA GPU with the Acer Nitro 5 (from 2020 and upwards) series and maybe an Ideapad gaming.
This is an odd comment.
Imagine I walked up to you, asked if you were happy with your computer, you said yes, and then I proceeded to try to "sell" you on an "upgrade" to half the RAM for the same price. Now consider if we weren't talking about the same price; I'm suggesting that you spend an extra $200+ on this.
Why would anyone take that deal?
Chromebooks expire, losing security updates, and buying an older model is almost always a bad deal. Figuring out expiration dates is a PITA. In practice, COVID19 shortages aside, they typically carry very low resale value.
If you're running Linux, you don't care.
A rather premium model can be had for under $200 easily. That's cheap enough that you can do things with it that you'd never do with a real laptop.
It's the last thing that's stopped me from using linux on a laptop day to day. A macbook is far superior for mobile needs (though more pricey) and I can justify a linux desktop for my day-to-day development activities because it's plugged into the power.
Linux support rounds out what I need, though it’s not perfect for GUI tools.