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Comment by pa7ch | Hacker News Reader

My ideal dev machine would be chromeOS running on apple silicon.

Maybe Chrome OS Flex will eventually support ARM Macs [0]? That would be cool for sure. I installed CloudReady for someone last year and it saved him from buying a new computer, and saved me from worrying about ongoing OS updates.

Disclosure: I work at Google and am speaking only for myself. I do not work on anything related to Chrome OS.

[0] https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/

Really? I have considered a chromeOS machine from afar, but I wasn't aware that it had reached a stage where it could become a good dev machine.

What's the coding workflow like on chromeOS?

If you have a remote box, probably just remote SSH + web IDE (potentially running on your remote box). For full local, you'd do it through the Crostini layer, which is basically Debian.

With the exception of a few missing things like full USB pass-through to crostini containers, chromeOS with crostini works about as good as my fedora laptop. I like its window management defaults better then gnome as well. Also you get auto-updated and supported firmware from google and secure boot by default.

Currently running a framework laptop with fedora just because I like the hardware better then most chromebooks and I can very cheaply throw in a fast 2TB ssd rather then spend hundreds extra to upgrade a chromebook to 512GB.

I tired chromeOS a few times as a dev machine and was always disappointed. Thing is, OSX doesn’t really get in my way using just a terminal, web browser, and spotlight. Installing stuff can be annoying at times compared to Linux, but it was even worse on chrome (basically didn’t work). I ended up ssh’d to a remote vps on chromeOS to get things done.

My ideal machine would be something that has Chrome OS Fireware and security features, a <insert favorite Linux distro> OS and a Apple Silicon.

The great thing about Chromebook is the firmware. Ron Minnich be praised.

Why not just Linux running on Apple Silicon? Isn't the entire selling point of Chrome OS that it can run well on cheap underpowered hardware?

Not really. Here are the advantages of ChromeOS as I see them:

Fast, unobtrusive, and regular software updates

Better touchpad and touchscreen support than any other Linux

Perfect integration between local files and files on Google Drive

A bare-bones userspace that is not bristling with security vulnerabilities

Software including the kernel is peak-optimized with profile-guided feedback, specifically and separately for each model of Chromebook, unlike most Linux distros that ship barely-optimized builds without PGO and targeting k8-generic.

ChromeOS is basically just Chrome.

Given that most of the time, I just run Chrome and Electron apps, it makes sense.

It might be possible sooner rather than later given Chrome OS Flex is a thing now.

As soon as linux can run on M1s stably, I think Flex would follow suit as well.

Mine would be one running upcoming Ryzen APU!

I rather use the certified UNIX that ships out of the box with Apple Silicon.

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