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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

My favorite device used to be a Chromebook. I got a maxed out Pixelbook in 2018 and I loved it, especially as Crostini got better and better over the years. It was my primary dev laptop and I loved using it.

I think we know where this is going... Like many other things Google over the past decade, it died on the vine - IIRC Google killed their Chromebook devices group a couple years ago. I would have loved a Pixelbook 2. I'm back on a Macbook because I was just never able to find a Chromebook that had sufficient processing power and memory after the Pixelbook.

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right there with you!

it's an i7 chromebook with 16GB RAM and 500GB ssd. that's still unheard of to this day...

runs linux apps natively

runs android apps natively

runs windows apps through linux/wine/steam layer

it's lightweight (2 lbs), very thin and fanless

has a high DPI touchscreen

3:2 aspect ratio

the battery lasts 10+ hours

it can be folded over into tablet mode and supports a wacom stylus

it's a chromebook so it's secure, and i don't have to fuss w/ drivers, or linux dependency hell... it just works, but lets you dive into the guts through containers if you want it.

this is a laptop from 2017, mind you... it's 2024 now, and there is still nothing else like it, 7 years later. it's kinda sad...

as usual, google pushes the boundary, and then kills the product. it was supposed to spur other manufacturers to do similar things but that hasn't happened.

there are various assortments and combinations of machines, chromebook or plain PCs that run windows/linux, but nothing actually hits all the marks: high dpi, powerful CPU, lots of memory, touchscreen, small and light, fanless, with a long-lasting battery.

there's nothing else like it.

you can find medium-DPI chromebooks with 4-8GB of RAM, and no touchscreen, and fans, with crappy batteries. you can find 16GB RAM chromebooks w/ FHD (low DPI, and no touchscreen). there are chromebooks w/ 8GB RAM, no touchscreen, high dpi, and fans... there are all sorts of combos in between, but nothing is the form factor of the pixelbook with the features it has. i don't want a plastic piece of crap that breaks.

the closest thing is a macbook air, perhaps, but apple will never make touchscreens on laptops because they want to sell people ipads and macbooks

HP Dragonfly Chromebook exist with up to 32GB RAM and has pretty good specs (good screen with touch), but it's very expensive for what you get.

I have one of those at work and it's a nice device, but I don't think it's worth the money.

Besides, I'm a sucker for fanless laptops. I used to have pixelbooks for personal use (first the 2018 and then the Go). A while ago I bought an M2 air and run asahi Linux on it. That HW plus ChromeOS would be nice...

My daily driver is an Acer Chromebook I bought used in 2018. Web and SSH are 80% of what I do, and it runs Debian in Crostini for the other 20%.

Six years later it's still fast, still secure, updates guaranteed through 2028.

Acer continues to make a few in this class with 16gb RAM and 256gb to 512gb SSD. When this eventually dies I'll get whatever similar they're selling then.

It's ridiculously cheap, even cheaper per month or year of usage. That's nice but it's not about cost for me. I'd pay 200% of the equivalent Windows or Mac or Framework machine just for the reliability, security, convenience, speed and peace of mind.

Do you mind sharing what an equivalent relatively modern equiavalent would be? I would love a small portable dumb terminal with a keyboard.

It runs Android apps too, right?

If I had to replace my old Chromebook, I'd probably go with this:

https://www.amazon.com/Chromebook-2560x1600-i5-1240P-LPDDR4X...

Decent CPU, 16gb RAM, 256gb SSD, quality screen with a thin bezel.

I like the extra memory because I sometimes run multiple Linux containers at the same time.

If you only want a dumb terminal for web and SSH you could easily get by with half that without sacrificing performance.

no touchscreen, not fanless, not much storage, not high dpi, and bad battery I've heard... it's also just a rather large laptop as well. :(

i did look at this when i was trying to decide on an alternative before i just bought another barley used pixelbook with only 50 battery cycles.

it's half the price so if it works for you, great! but it's no pixelbook replacement imo

Framework makes a Chromebook that can be stuffed with RAM and storage.

Thanks for the reminder. I looked into it when it first came out, and I know there was something I thought was a deal breaker but can't now remember what it was. Perhaps I just didn't realize how much memory can be added. I'll take a closer look again!

> My favorite device used to be a Chromebook.

Adding to the noise: +1.

The software and concept remains excellent. For me ChromeOS + crostini on a Chromebook is a "good enough" Linux Desktop with guaranteed hardware compatibility, 8 years software updates, and a battery that must last at least 7 hours running on hardware that is designed to withstand the treatment handed out by a 16 year old. Because of the Android security model it's far safer than traditional desktops, be they Windows or MacOS or Linux. For example it's secure enclave is something a bank can trust.

But all bar the education hardware is mostly gone, and what hasn't gone it is produced in such small numbers it's at Macbook level pricing. It's a shame.

framework makes a chromebook that you can put 64gb ram in. I don't think you can upgrade the cpu though

Just get the normal Framework, install Ubuntu on it and delete all the icons except for Chrome

People do all those other things in the message above you on chromebooks, they don't just use chrome. That's why people like them.

And deal with manually updating

Much less secure.

How exactly is ChromeOS "secure"? Is it just a word that gets passed around in the marketing materials? Where is the evidence that it's more secure than Linux?

Let's see, the root filesystem is read-only with tamper-proof authentication, user's home directory is encrypted.

Chrome runs with the usual privilege separation in multiple processes each in it's own tight sandbox.

There is no way to autostart anything.

Even in the nuclear case of a 0-day RCE + chained sandbox breakout + privilege escalation to root, the threat can not persist itself... you just reboot the device and are save again.

And the list goes on...

Their crosvm VMM puts every emulated piece of hardware in it's own isolated process[1]. The drive emulator is blocked from even open files itself.

Google has lot's of experience in security, they are one of the few who still build their own browser, the most hostile environment.

[1] https://crosvm.dev/book/appendix/sandboxing.html

ChromeOS is Linux, as it's running the Linux kernel. As is Android for that matter. But anyway, Google doesn't let you run random binaries you download on ChromeOS, outside of a limited sandbox, making it more secure than a distro that lets you run curl | sudo sh outside of a VM.

There are some other security shaped things they do as well.

https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3438631?hl=en

Here is an incomplete paper that gives a 50,000ft overview: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/refer...

The average Linux desktop does not even come close to having a design as thorough as this, much less a full-blown, actually usable implementation of said design. Frankly, 99% of Linux desktop installs used by developers I've ever seen are nothing more than single-user systems with everything running under a user account that is morally (and in practice, technically) equivalent to root.

The bar for desktop security in the Linux world is actually very, very low.

Is this really a problem? I haven't come to close to a personal security issue in over a decade now.

The web services I use are more likely to be hacked than my personal machines.

Much less private.

the chromebook in question: https://frame.work/ca/en/products/laptop-chromebook-12-gen-i...

What about recently released ASUS ExpertBook CX54 Chromebook?

https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-home/chromebook/asus-expert...

Can I ask what made you move on? I'm still using mine for basic tasks from the couch and as a travel device. It's perfect for taking to a cafe and crushing some email for a few hours. And the screen is a beauty.

I develop and run code in Crostini (e.g. VSCode, primarily for TypeScript and Python development in NodeJS, run Postgres, etc.) Over the years the lack of performance options (i.e. memory and processor updates) has become hugely noticeable, e.g. compilation is much faster on my current MacBook.

The Pixelbook was always a bit slower (obviously running in Crostini takes a bit of a perf hit) but originally the other benefits made up for it, but now the performance gap has become a chasm.

If you want powerful hardware there's ChromeOS Flex, combine it with a framework laptop and you should be fine

ChromeOS flex can't run Android apps like native ChromeOS - so getting the framework chromebook edition will give you all bells and whistles.

fwiw, Framework sells a Chromebook

My favorite device used to be a Chromebook (Dell Chromebook 13, codename Lulu). But it stopped getting updates a long time ago (wasn't covered by the new 10 year policy). It ran for a long time just fine but then a few sites started not working on the old version of Chrome.

I flashed it's bootloader to the Mr Chromebox one and now it's been running Fedora Kinoite very well. So still my favorite device, just a new favorite OS. Kinoite (via RPM Ostree) gives that same feeling of no worry updates.

ChromeOS is great and has only improved. Its great as an OS that needs absolutely no care and feeding. It was amazingly efficient, it didn't start struggling until 120+ browser tabs. But Kinoite (combined with things like Distrobox) is more flexible. There's a lot more of how the sausage is made especially getting full disk encryption going (I used tang and clevis) on Kinoite. And ChromeOS has some of the things that make Distrobox and Flatpaks great (desktop integration basically).

So TL;DR, look at flashing your bootloader and installing Linux.

https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/getting-started.html

agreed that it's a possibility which is where https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/ comes in. I've yet to be failed by its guidance for either box or book

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