I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook | Hacker News Reader

I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

blog.johnozbay.com

134 pointsspeckx173 comments

Going from complaining about Apple not having enough polish in the fine details of their UI to suggesting we all switch to Chromebooks is so completely inconsistent that there must be other motivations.

In one post they're complaining about things like Apple having the search bar in different locations in different apps, and in the next post they're seriously trying to tell us that a laptop that requires modifying the software and running shell commands copied from the internet so you can run a text editor to change settings and drivers is the solution? They dropped a note about how they haven't actually tried development on the chromebook at the end but say they assume it would be okay. For someone telling us to switch to Chromebooks, they haven't even finished doing their own homework

Linking to an SEO spam website called technical.city for performance comparisons is another clue that this choice was driven by something else first and the reasoning was backfilled. The new MediaTek part is fast, but there's more to laptop performance than a single bar chart from a site citing ancient benchmarks like PassMark.

I can't read this as anything other than an attempt to make a contrarian choice and then present it as the superior alternative.

It's possible that your own opinions are coloring this perspective. As a Linux user, if you gave me the choice between switching back to macOS or dailying ChromeOS instead, it's objectively (sadly) true that the ChromeOS machine would do a better job handling my daily tasks. Going back to macOS would require me to keep multiple desktop machines around for gaming, filesystem manipulation and native Linux containers. ChromeOS would be viable for all of those.

> You can technically game on some Chromebooks, but come on.

I just want the Steam edition of Dwarf Fortress, really =)

> If you were trying to do native Linux development on a Chromebook you'd be going through more obstacles.

Not really. Crostini has been supported for years, and it uses less resources than macOS containers while supporting normal filesystems instead of virtualizing it on APFS like Docker does.

Have you heard of this?

According to their GitHub, this should solve the issues you mentioned with Linux development on macOS. Note: I have not used it myself as I find macOS+Brew sufficient for my tasks.

https://github.com/apple/container

Can I put Ubuntu on this and it works exactly the same as on any other ARM machine? Supposedly yes https://docs.getutm.app/guides/ubuntu/ but have you actually done it?

Honestly this and Crostini both look like there are too many caveats. I'd just SSH into an Rpi for anything that won't natively run in macOS. And would not even deal with Chromebook.

P.S. I +1'd bigyabai's comment only to save it from being marked dead; why is someone downvoting that??

> have you actually done it?

Yes.

What do you mean by "works exactly the same?" The same as Ubuntu installed on an ARM laptop? No, there is not GUI, DE, and a lot of tools are stripped.

You can literally pull this down and get it up and running in minutes:

https://hub.docker.com/_/ubuntu/

Rosetta is not necessary to get this working either. Now, there maybe some warts with DNS that you might encounter depending on if you have a certain VPNs running, use dnsmasq, etc.. But there are potential workarounds for many issues.

If you want a full VM, I would recommend Lima/Colima. If you need a full VM with GUI and all, then maybe use something like Parallels, VMware Fusion, etc..

I mean like same as Ubuntu on an x86 laptop for general work. This is assuming you don't have any specific need for x86 binaries, but you also never know what might randomly require it. Would've tried it myself but I'm away from my Mac rn. I'll try again.

Last time I tried UTM specifically for reading an ext4-formatted SD card in my MacBook's internal slot, I couldn't get it to interface with the reader, but that works on Chromebooks' Linux VM supposedly.

> I mean like same as Ubuntu on an x86 laptop for general work.

I would say no, but then again, I would also not recommend using any type of container for that type of work either.

I use Container on macOS to build containers for things like Claude Code, Node.js, Java, etc.. You know, software I want no where near my host OS. I mount a directory in the container, if needed, and it's smooth sailing.

I do believe Container allows for one to run x86 containers with Rosetta, but I also know once you enable Rosetta, it's easier to reinstall your OS than to uninstall. I like to keep things tidy, so I will not go down this path.

> ext4-formatted SD card in my MacBook's internal slot

I would not use Container nor any other containerization tool for this task regardless of whether it is possible or not. I would be surprised if any VM client would be able to get this working too, but I've been out of the VM world for a bit.

It's also worth mentioning that come macOS 28, Rosetta will be dead and gone except for a select set of video games. That version of Rosetta will essentially be stripped down to the point of working just enough for those games and nothing more. So, I would not get too attached to the idea of running x86 binaries on macOS for too much longer.

I believe there may be some tools that can read ext4 on macOS, but UTM not reading from the host's SD Card is unsurprising. I have never used UTM, but I would imagine it would not have the capability to pass the SD reader through, but I could be entirely wrong.

I'd seriously recommend buying the cheapest burner Chromebook, x86 machine, VPS, or whatever you need if you think running x86 binaries and reading/writing to/from ext4 formatted storage will be in your future. You could maybe try an external USB SD reader, but I cannot comment if that would work either.

I've used UTM before to install Ubuntu on my Mac Studio (M4) and it even supported my 4K70 monitor.

To be fair there is some config and tweaking required, but for a free tool it seems pretty good. Parallels has a better EXPERIENCE but I don't use VMs often; when I need raw Linux I just use one of my homelab servers.

Or just develop your app on macOS and run it on Linux. I’ve been doing that ever since OSX came out and had no problems. Worst case these days I have a virtual machine build an app or library for x86, but I still do all the dev on the Mac.

I find people who make these complaints about Linux just like Linux better. Totally fine. From my perspective, sure, some things are slightly different or need a homebrew install, but there’s plenty about Linux that’s as big or bigger pain as some of the stuff on the Mac.

That said, if Liquid Glass is the complaint and your solution is a Chromebook, wow. Just, wow.

I use this tool all the time. Mainly for running various LLM cli tools and whatnot. No way will I install those tools on my host OS due to my unfounded paranoia.

Container still has a few warts. Mainly, Container and mDNSResponder on macOS do not always play nicely together. If you use a VPN that binds to port 53, you will also have a bad time. Container-to-Container name resolution is also hit or miss.

However, none of these issues have prevented me from accomplishing what I need. Though, I can see where friction may arise between some corporate network environments and Container.

Or embrace UNIX, and take into account each flavour.

Crostini has been WIP for years, unless you happen to buy a Google device, this is what will happen in most OEMs,

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...

"After my last blog post I received tons and tons of emails from people mentioning that they switched to X or Y because of Liquid Glass, and much like them, I switched away from the Apple ecosystem thanks to these ongoing issues as well."

Then within 2 sentences: "So this blog post is about my painful journey trying to find a nice piece of hardware that works and feels just as good as Apple's hardware as a web developer."

So yeah I really don't get the motivation

A Chromebook gets you the elegant UI, touchpad gestures, slim vertically integrated system architecture and the reliable sleep mode of a MacBook without Liquid Glass.

Plus Chromebooks have the better keyboard layout IMHO.

Oh I misread the author's complaints about hardware as "software." Ok assuming the author hates liquid glass enough to switch cause of that, and doesn't have the same standard of polish for hardware, at least the post is self-consistent.

I don't believe the claims of Lenovo hardware (esp trackpad) being as good as a MacBook's, but he thinks it is, so up to him. The keyboard layout is annoying cause control-C is both copy and kill.

With the default terminal you copy by selecting, like X11, and paste with right-click.

So select is select or copy, right click is open menu or paste, both depending on whether or not you're in the terminal. Control-C is also copy or kill, and iirc shift-control-c is nothing or copy.

There's a meta key on the keyboard, idk why they can't just do meta-c meta-v everywhere. Same in Ubuntu.

I .. don't get how anyone can consider ChromeOS to have a elegant UI.

I have a chromebook for traveling and light web dev work since years .. and it works, because I rooted it and allmost do not have to use the UI(I need the terminal and chrome dev tools). In general it got better, but is still horrible inefficient and not ergonomic. Or did you mean it looks good? Well, maybe, but for me a elegant UI means it does not get into my workflow and can do quickly what I want. Which .. it nativly cannot.

As someone using a Chromebook as my daily driver, not getting into my workflow and quickly doing what I want is exactly ChromeOS's UI. Especially virtual desktops combined with the touchpad: Switching between tabs, going forwards and backwards in history, switching virtual desktops and apps is all done with a few gestures.

Hm, maybe that part is more polished, but I don't use it. My pain points are very basic stuff, quickly opening a file explorer, finding files, copy paste, navigating folders. It all improved, but still feels awkward and is way slower (takes more clicks/key presses) than in linux or windows.

I have never had any problem with any of those things on any OS I have used. Pin the files app to your taskbar, boom, easy access to files and folders. Hit the circle key and type in the launcher box to search. Copy paste is...identical other than Ctrl vs cmd?

ChromeOS is fine. I wish they hadn't given up on Steam and models with dgpus, but I prefer playing games on a Switch these days anyway.

How can I copy a filepath?

How to go to a specific path? Not by clicking on the filepath like I can do in other OS.

(Apart from that, most of my hate comes from the early days of chromeOS, where the file browser was really, really slow. Doing cd and cp in terminal was blazingly fast, but in the filebrowser the same operations were crippling slow (on different devices), so much that I learned to avoid it. That bug/unoptimal implementation (?) got fixed some years ago and in general it improved, but it is still no joy for me using it)

Edit: I just intentionally tried out some things with my chromeOS device, and noticed many pain points are still there, but the file explorers "search" improved a lot. I allmost like it (more than that of windows file explorer)

I have one of those Morphius Chromebooks (ThinkPad Yoga C13, 16GB RAM + real SSD) and it's unusably slow in ChromeOS. I flashed the coreboot package and installed openSUSE, and now it's my primary machine and absolutely usable with 6+ hours battery life.

I don't understand how Google could screw up Gentoo so badly.

So does a MacBook on Sonoma or Monterey.

I mean, it’s prob easier to run chromeos in utm on the Mac…

But then you won't have the touchscreen to use with Android apps.

Given your chosen quotes, I don't understand your confusion.

The author explicitly acknowledges that Apple makes excellent hardware, and the desire to switch is driven solely by problems with the software (OS).

> All this made me realize Liquid Glass and Apple's software incompetence is absolutely universally hated, yet their hardware is universally loved. So credit where it's due, they make great hardware.

I have no issue with liquid glass. IMO it’s a few people making a bunch of noise about vanishingly minor complaints. So, like all things, not universal.

Me neither. Much ado about nothing, just fodder for podcast fillers. I've been on the Mac since System 6. It's not a badge of honor, it's that we've been there before. Ups and downs all along, but at least for me who doesn't run anything in production on a Mac, all these squeals are annoying noise. Don't like it, get something else, it's just a machine, dude. Turnis will not read your emails.

Exactly this. Whenever macOS updates, I avoid any and all posts here, on Reddit, on wherever because it's just full of complaints and threats to leave macOS.

In the meantime, I update, note the minor (to me) changes and go about my work.

The author did a horrible job doing laptop research if the goal was to replace a MacBook’s build quality and overall vibe.

I have no idea why this random Mediatek chip was the qualifier for finding a system.

Just Josh Tech (YouTube) and their associated site bestlaptop.deals is my favorite resource at the moment for laptop reviews and for finding the best fit. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I just think they are thorough and present with a critical eye avoiding a lot of hype YouTuber BS.

They aren’t the best at recommendations for Linux laptops as they don’t fully install the OS but they at least try it out on a live image.

To me the clear winner right now for people who like Linux and want something that’s a MacBook-like experience is the Framework 13 Pro. Framework appears to have resolved basically all of the shortcomings of the current revision (which still is no slouch), they’ve added a CNC aluminum build and haptic trackpad, and it’s a first-class Linux experience that’s Ubuntu certified.

Other than that, I’d be looking at options like the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i Aura Edition 15, maybe even a Zenbook Duo 2026 if the idea of a second screen on the go is appealing and money is no object.

Someone looking for some discrete GPU performance that rivals or beats MacBook Pros equipped with Pro or Max chips can look at the Zephyrus G14/G16. Sure, they’re “gamer” laptops, but I really like them in person and they feel very premium. They’re pretty well established as the best thin and light gaming laptops on the market, very close in dimensions to MacBook Pro.

I scrolled to the bottom and this passage caught my eye:

   Since you have a proper linux under the hood, you can easily install and use things like nodejs / npm etc as well.

I immediately closed the tab.

forest for the trees engineer behaviour

I can't think of any valid reason for a person with sane mind to do this. Yes, macOS is somewhat closed, but it's definitely more open than ChromeOS.

Ha, same. I absolutely love everything about my MacBook Pro.

...except the operating system. And the silly notch. And the weird keyboard. And the hard palm-cutting corner. And the reflective screen. and the finger-print-magnet materials. And the small amount of RAM. and the small SSD. And the weight.

Other than that, it's perfect! (On the blance,still better than any other laptop)

ChromeOS is the absolute last desktop operating system I would choose to use for myself. Linux, macOS, and Windows would have to be completely dead and buried before I would switch, and at that point I might just consider abandoning tech altogether and joining an Amish commune or something.

When was the last time you tried ChromeOS, out of curiosity? I'd always reach for Linux first, but I'm hard-pressed to put Windows or macOS in second place when both are so miserably bloated.

It's not about bloat, it's about Google. The only tech company I despise more than Google is Facebook.

> but it's definitely more open than ChromeOS.

I don't think that's entirely true. For instance, ChromeOS supports Mesa, which macOS has spent the past decade pretending doesn't exist.

For small businesses using Google Workspace, Chrome book is so easy to manage.

What do you mean by open and closed? ChromeOS is based on ChromiumOS, which is open source. I guess macOS is based on Darwin technically, but the ratio of open source to proprietary is much higher for ChromeOS than macOS, no?

I think they mean closed as in it is more difficult to install whatever you want on a ChromeOS machine as opposed to a MacOS machine.

What is it that you want to install on ChromeOS that you are unable to? All of the usual Linux and open-source stuff works fine on the built-in Linux environment on it. Possibly even a little better than MacOS in some cases, since you don't need to worry about Apple app signing. There's not literally nothing you can't do, but the list is a lot shorter than most people think, especially those who haven't really tried ChromeOS in a decade and think they're all a glorified web browser on $200 hardware.

You can technically run anything you want on both without resorting to hacks, it's just a question of how annoying it is.

On a Chromebook you can install the Linux Dev VM with 5 clicks in the settings and get a fully featured Debian VM.

I'm willing to bet it's easier to set up a Linux VM on a Chromebook than on a Mac. But the other side is that anything not explicitly requiring Linux will work natively in macOS, where you also get a nicer terminal. Like I've not needed a Linux VM in years, and the author doing web dev probably won't either.

pretty dang easy to run a Linux container on MacOS using Colima (https://github.com/abiosoft/colima).

Relative to native Docker and Crostini, my experience using Colima at work was like pulling my own teeth out.

Crostini is built into the Chromebook, vs macOS where I hear a different container solution every time someone asks about it. Colima is a new one to me. Maybe it works great and the others do too, but full 1P support is a step up.

Yes, however most of us don't really need to use Linux containers for our work, plain traditional UNIX works just fine.

But if I don't want to have to use a VM?

Well, then you can only put it in dev mode and use chromebrew. Which I am glad exists, but even installing node can be a pain and the way to get it running changed over the years.

But how? You can install Linux and android apps on chrome os. I understand this perspective might intuitively make sense, but we need to analyze if it's actually true.

I can't think of any sense in which this statement could be supported by facts.

ChromeOS will run on any standard machine and subsystems (qndroid, linux) work decently good.

What concrete points makes you put macos as more open ?

Root on the host OS. Can't change the MAC on the wifi adapter, for instance.

You can change the wifi mac on any chromeos machine with literally `ifconfig`.

You can even install linux on Chromebooks, and ChromeOS has upstreamed / opensource many of their codes.

In other perspective, ChromeOS supports running Linux apps w/ GUI without much differences. You just open your terminal, type `apt install XXX`, then `XXX` should work out-of-the box.

I don't see any reasons that ChromeOS is less open then macOS

Any? Crostini is neat and all, but it's a VM running inside of ChromeOS, so it's restricted in what it can do.

The entire system firmware is open source, so it’s relatively straightforward to replace the system firmware with Coreboot and EDKII to boot normal UEFI Linux. It works excellent. mrchromebox.tech and docs.chrultrabook.com have all the nitty gritty details.

x86 only tho

> Figma and Spotify have some of the best web apps out there as well, so that's all good too!

The Spotify web app is still much more limited than the desktop app.

> Did you know that Adobe ported Photoshop etc to web, with all the AI bells and whistles and the web apps perform incredibly well?

Perfect if all you need out of Photoshop is the AI portion, I guess.

> As a side note, it is no surprise that Adobe's suite of creative apps [...] now work incredibly well on the web across all operating systems

They literally don't.

> Quickshare (the Airdrop alternative) ACTUALLY WORKS

Saying this like Airdrop isn't one of Apple's most bulletproof "just works" features ever

In my experience it’s definitely not. It works maybe 80% to 90% of the time but it’s still not enough for me to use it with confidence.

Airdrop still doesn't work when I share directly from my phone. If I hit share, and then choose the airdrop target directly, it doesn't work. If I open airdrop and share to the same device, then that works.

For cross-platform local sharing, I use KDE-connect.

I got to this point before I realised this wasn't written by a human.

> Apple's most bulletproof "just works" features ever

It only just works if all devices are logged in to the same Apple account. Otherwise you have to allow a 10 minute window in the phones settings.

Work Mac laptop not logged in won’t see an iPhone unless you go into settings. My home and work PCs I both own can’t even be airdropped to, I know some people think this adds value to Mac machines but in a world where the most powerful gpu isn’t on a Mac it actually makes the apple ecosystem feel like trash if you’re someone working on the top end of computing and can’t send a file from your workstation to your phone.

Uh no. Just have the accounts in each other's contacts.

I don't really get what the problem with MacOS is. It never gets in my way, so why would I switch? Yes, I found Liquid Glass ugly and two days later I completely forgot about it.

This is what happened for me. Total waste of effort complaining about it.

It's like Linux users who scream about Arch KDE Plasma being better than Kubuntu XFCE++ and change their entire GUI every year. They're obsessing over rounded corners lining up. None of this matters that much.

It's more serious on iPhones cause it's glitchy in ways that will interfere with basic usage, also yet another "we need old phones to feel slower" update.

How many? Many are using chromebooks and not complaining. Many use Linux and not complaining - as I work at a University.

A majority need only a browser.

It's overall very few. Most people using Chromebook or other Linux or Mac in a university are just using it for work and not obsessing over details.

Kubuntu is Ubuntu with KDE not Xfce

You can install Xfce in Kubuntu (well also Xfce++ isn't real)

Really hilarious to complain about inconsistency in macOS and then encourage jumping to linux where you have one GTK app, one QT app, an electron app, and some secret fourth thing all running simultaneously with zero consistency or adherence to any kind of human interface guidelines.

and it's hotly debated what is the "correct" way to install Steam in Linux, even though you'd think whatever steampowered.com says is obviously the right way (same with other things)

Both the gnome project and KDE have HI guidelines.

Also, I don't understand how this is magically better on mac os. Mac os doesn't have electron apps? Get real, it's the same bullshit on every desktop OS. At least we can all agree it's more consistent than windows.

There's no QT vs GTK situation on Mac. Windows has more of a mix of UI, but at least compatibility tends to be preserved.

Besides that, macOS and Windows each only have one DE and one window system. So in tutorials or IT help, it's enough info to specify that you're using "Mac" or maybe "Mac Tahoe," not "Linux, Debian Trixie, KDE Plasma, on Wayland." Not to mention hardware-specific issues, though those aren't Linux's fault.

None of this has to do with consistency, though, which is the topic at hand.

I mean, maybe you can say Windows has "one window system". But Microsoft has over a dozen GUI frameworks, and then they don't even use them. Teams is electron, believe it or not. I mean, in windows TODAY you can find UIs from 1995 to today in there.

And that's just Microsoft software! The pre installed shit. Don't even get me started on applications. Let me tell you, that's not a problem on KDE or GNOME.

Versus macOS, where you encounter one Cocoa, one SwiftUI/UIKit, the same Electron app, a Catalyst app and a Flutter GUI fighting you for attention. Apple is lucky Windows exists, otherwise they'd be the most Balkanized OS in the mainstream.

On the other hand, I found it quite pleasant and subsequently forgot about it. It’s out of my way and I focus on the task at hand.

Some people actually want a great GNU/Linux laptop, they buy Apple because macOS is a UNIX with cool hardware, then they discover that UNIX !== GNU/Linux and complain about all the issues running Linux software on macOS.

They start already from the wrong place.

Author admitted he did nothing worthwhile that justified a full fledged workstation and adopted a tablet with keyboard.

As a Mac user I was pleasantly surprised when I switched to a arch Linux based distribution.

Not even a Mac user and have been legitimately considering a move like this.

My desktop and Thinkpad run Gentoo. A NAS I have at home is the build host. I am a business software consultant, and a common thread in all of my interactions is: I need to be prepared. If I'm fiddling with "hang on my mic doesn't work" or "i need to reboot", I look silly.

An onsite visit might be in an executive board room, or a closet in the back of a warehouse with a TV from 2007 and a VGA connector.

If I need software installed quick, like Zoom or something, Flatpak gets me 95% there. Yes, I could use Ubuntu or something normal, but I like portage and long for the day I can use FreeBSD seriously on the desktop.

So enter Chromebooks, which come with portage, can use Flatpak, and the OS is basically just a web browser. Plus, I don't have to wrestle with SELinux, or any of the other nitty gritty stuff that gets in the way of real work™. It's either a PWA or an Android app, and it just works.

I went the other way: from a Pixelbook to a Macbook Air. I mostly do SW development in the CLI, so the Linux subsystem on the chromebook was fine, as is macports/homebrew/etc. on the mac. I would still be using the Pixelbook if I could have replaced its battery. The low-end Air had good price-performance tradeoff, and the Neo would probably be today's choice.

I am in a similar boat. I already have Mac Mini M4 and don't do any fancy development stuff, especially not in my free time. But can't for the sake of me decide if I should go with Air M4 to match the specs, or just go full lightweight and get Neo.

Choosing an OS 101

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/mx4dni/cho...

Do you fear technology?

> Yes

Is your daddy rich?

> No

ChromeOS

I don't know why the author plays down the versatility of Chromebooks/ChromeOS so much. You can install the Linux Dev VM with 5 clicks in the settings. You get a fully featured Debian VM with nested virtualization support and seamless Wayland, VirGL and USB passtrough.

That's where I spend all my Chromebook work time. I run VSCode, Claude Code, and Opencode in the VM. The Tailscale package is wonky, so I use the Android app instead. Except for that wrinkle, it all just works.

It's not my main machine, but for $300 (2023 dollars) it's excellent for tinkering on the couch with Netflix on TV in the background.

Good Lord, what next? “I switched from Mac to Windows and you can too”?

Might make sense if the Chromebook can be degoogled and set up with a clean Linux distro. Barring that, a regular laptop with Linux may be an option.

Framework has always been appealing to me as a Mac competitor

If I could choose only 1 criterium to select a laptop, it's the quality of the trackpad. So far, I haven't tried anything that comes close to a Macbook.

*criterion. criterium is not even a typo, it’s an actual word but it doesn’t mean what you think it means, unless you’re planning to use your laptop while bicycling.

As a Belgian, I’m very familiar with cycling criteriums, but we use the same word for both! :-)

> So far, I haven't tried anything that comes close to a Macbook.

The trackpad on Apple's newest iPad Pro keyboard case is excellent.

Downside: whenever you go back to your Macbook you'll try poking the screen a lot.

Same, but they are a bit expensive. I assume if TFA put himself through the pain of a Chromebook in the first place, it’s because cost was a significant factor.

Even if you can afford a more expensive laptop, there's just something about knowing you can hit Best buy and just grab a $300 laptop and be back at it, if anything happens to your laptop while you're out and about in the world.

Yeah, it's definitely possible. https://github.com/altreact/archbk shows how you might do this end to end on an older machine and this thread https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=17308 shows some progress in that direction on this particular device.

The real question is if you have enough patience to power through making it work.

No need to reinvent the wheel: https://docs.chrultrabook.com/docs/installing/installing-lin...

Been running Debian on an hp Chromebook for 2y now.

I did switch from MacOS to MS Windows in 2023, after being on MacOS from 2015 (and various Linux distros between about 2000 and 2015; before that, Win98 and earlier versions, so help me God).

I did not think anyone would be interested in reading about any of this, and reading the article reinforces my hypothesis.

He could write the same exact post but swap the word "Mac" for "Windows" and the comment section here would be markedly different.

Chrome OS? No, thank you. I'll stay with macOS and keep hoping for the Asahi Linux dream

Why?

I try to stay away from Google if I can, I know Apple isn't perfect either but I am more aligned with them despite it.

Apple portable hardware is unparalleled. Linux is what runs the internet.

For now, my old gaming PC runs as a Linux server hosting all my dev services and home lab projects and my MacBook is where I work with them and build apps that consume them.

It would be nice to have the server setup mirrored on a laptop I could take places with me.

you can run Arch proper in UTM.app on macos...utm is available on the app store or open source, and wraps the apple silicon hypervisor.framework.

it works fantastic magic. i had dual booted Asahi for a year or so, but really for no good reason once i realized UTM existed.

Do you use x64 emulation with UTM? If so, how's the performance?

No. It's all native Arm. In the UTM app, when creating a new VM, there's an option to say it's going to be "Linux" (generically at that point), which exposes a checkbox which allows you to specify use of Apple Silicon hypervisor.framework, and specifically _not_ x86 emulation.

I use hypervisor.framework, never use x86 emulation, and the result is great. Tested with both Fedora for ARM and Arch for ARM (perhaps CachyOS's bundling of Arch works there, but i did it lower level because i'm an old nerd).

This is what I thought, but idk why the literature about this is never clear that it's ARM Linux only.

which literature? (that question posed, i had to sleuth around to disambiguate oft repeated misinformation before figuring this all out)

I don't have it in front of me, have just seen conflicting info on a lot on articles about virtualization on Mac.

Well wait, UTM's official website clearly says it does support x86 if you're ok with the emu performance hit. Is that wrong?

It does support x86 at higher performance costs.

that checkbox i mentioned above lets you choose to use native Apple ARM via the hypervisor.framework, or use Qemu which lets you do the x86 emulation?

I'm aware of it, though I would like to have a native solution with GPU acceleration and all the hardware benefits.

If you are on a M1 or M2 chip you can live the dream _now_ already and install Asahi (Asahi Fedora Remix or Asahi Alarm https://asahi-alarm.org/ - which I am a maintainer of). It works really great (daily driving it since 4 years now...) M3 support is coming soon as well...

No way! I'm on M1 Pro, may be making the move finally ... how's the peripheral support these days? I use a Thunderbolt Display with the Studio Display. Any other particular things I should know?

I have to switch between an M4 macbook pro and a Lenovo Chromebook Plus multiple times a day and I will say, while it isn't terrible, the keyboard and trackpad on the Lenovo have nothing on the Macbook. The experience with using USB devices (yubikey in particular) through the android layer is also real shitty.

I have had fun with a $40 Chromebook on which I installed Linux (I can't remember the exact flavor). It great low power portable for writing on the go when I don't want to worry about bringing a more expensive machine around, but sadly the screen cracked and it would have cost more than $40 to fix

I really enjoy ChromeOS, though I'm worried a lot of its simplicity will go away as Google transitions to Android-based laptops. My wife and I use an Asus Chromebook Flip as a kitchen/living room computer that we don't need to think about. No software updates, it just surfs the web and we can flip it into tablet mode if we want to.

I recently had to turn in my work Macbook and started using personal Lenovo Thinkpad E14 -- last or second to last gen.

I have to say that everything, aside from keyboard and hardware (ie CPU, storage etc) on it is bad. Screen is bad, sound si horrible, webcam makes me look like I died a couple of days ago -- all gray and blurry, battery is obviously have nothing on Apple silicon laptops, fans are noisy, touchpad is bad, all is bad. But what impressed me the most are USB-C ports. They are somehow bad too. There's no grip, there's no feedback, you just kind of put a cable somewhere in them and hope it doesn't arc -- because sometimes it sounds like electrical arcing in there. Not quite pencil in a bucket, but not far off. And the thing is new, how do you manage that on a new business laptop? I'm very impressed, in the worst way possible.

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

>> it seems that Signal's team is actively working on linking additional Android devices, and very soon we can simply solve this by using Signal for Android.

Wishful thinking, this has been a problem since tablets (android or ios) were a thing and trying to use one linked to your phone.

> - If you rely on / heavily use AI tools, you can easily use Claude's Web App etc so that's super cool but also things like Jan also exist for Linux and I haven't tried, but you can use that as well for a more native experience.

Sure, Claude Web App is an adequate replacement to full-fledged Claude Code, and then there is also something that I didn't bother to try but maybe you can try it after you bought a new laptop. What the hell.

> no fucking way there's a Mediatek chip out there that's as good as M2?!? right!?

Actually Mediatek is pretty underrated. Isn't the upcoming Dimensity 9600 Pro on par with the M5 [0]? And they also designed the CPU part of the GB10 in the NVIDIA DGX Spark, which is roughly on par with the CPU of the AMD AI Max+ 395 and M3 Max 14 core [1] [2].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1so1wyv/dimensity...

[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/17762799?baseli...

[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=m3+max

I’m expecting delivery of a used Lenovo yoga thinkpad simply to run one piece of software that I previously ran on an older intel Mac using a virtual windows drive, sadly the security on that software (dongles!!) will not and possibly will never run on new Apple silicon, so I’m gonna be lugging a win machine around for any projects that call upon that security software. I worked with the developer and tried a a patched software key for the same security, but sadly it didn’t work either. I’ll still be sticking to Mac for most of my work as I just prefer the way things predictably operate, but I am now going to have a windows toy to play with too, even if it’s actually for work !

Grass is greener works at month two. By month nine your muscle memory is still wrong.

I actually tried this last year and the show stopper was Citrix. The version for Chromebooks is some abomination that hasn't been kept recent and so fails validation with my employer's Citrix infra.

I investigated this path. In terms of comparable performance per watt komapnio laptops are competitive. But not on price. Then there's the aspect of how open/closed each ecosystem is. While iOS is an prison like ecosystem, macos still remains quite open, more open than many chromebooks.

Asahi linux exist and i was surprised to see that these arm chromebooks just lack bios/uefi that allows me to install anything other than chromeos.

So, yeah, you can virtualize other OS on chromeos but so can you on macos

I just have a workstation at home that I SSH into from whatever device I feel like (within my tailnet). All my tools available on the CLI and vscode available via remote-ssh. You can connect from an iPad, macbook, chromebook, etc. The only thing it doesn't handle well is creative apps (video editing, blender, photoshop, etc.).

Obviously this whole setup requires an internet connection, but I'm rarely without one so it works great for me. Anyone else do something similar?

A Mediatek chip rivalling Apple M2? Is this claim supportable?

It's basically dimensity 9400, and I think it's fairly comparable.

I have this exact laptop - I just use it for casual web browsing, but it does have a significant problem that I've encountered - although it has a 3.5mm stereo port, it's unusable due to static sounds.

Possibly this bug that's been floating around for the past 6 years: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/172339479

It's probably simply defective, I would warranty/replace it.

Hm, that's possible. Not sure I use headphones enough with it to bother going through a warranty replacement, but I'll keep that in mind in case I get motivated with some free time to do so.

The static pattern seems odd to me, but I assume would make sense if the root cause was identified:

* Plug headphones into laptop: no static.

* Open youtube tab: Static.

* Mute audio: Static.

* Tab away from youtube: Static stops after ~10s.

* Tab back to youtube and start video: Static resumes.

* Adjust volume: No effect on static. (At normal listening volumes, static isn't audible over music audio.)

I'll note that there are various reports of something almost identical being triggered by a ChromeOS software update ~6 years ago across multiple brands of Chromebooks, e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/fx9y19/samsung_ch...

I'm interested in the hardware on this... does anyone know if this laptop can boot arm64 Linux natively? Perhaps with an alternate bootloader install?

I've read about plenty of other Chromebooks that can do that, but I can't find any info on booting Linux on this one.

ChromeOS would be so much more compelling if it could be degoogled... An Ungoogled-ChromiumOS would be amazing.

To me the most amazing thing of using Chromebook is that you can run the Tailscale _Android_ app and get your ChromeOS connected to your tailnet.

I love these articles. I await the inevitable post-mortem 6-9 months down the line.

My biggest issues with ChromeOS revolve around crap keyboards, bad/clunky Linux implementations (unless you just replace ChromeOS, but why not just get a cheap or older laptop?), and not trusting Google at all.

So we're calling normal usb ports "old school" now?

The type-a ports that are 30 years old, have always been frustrating to orient correctly, and are significantly constrained in data rates and power delivery compared to type-c that has been common for a decade? Yes, calling that "old school" is reasonable.

Basically someone that doesn't take advantage of macOS features, doesn't develop for Apple platforms, is happy with a thin client OS, alright I guess.

I do not agree with what he wrote, but I had an enjoyable reading experience, which is rare these days. That is some clean blog design.

I am not very tech-savvy, mostly into Analytics - DS. I love my Mac. The whole UX is far superior compared to Windows or a Chromebook.

> Apple's software incompetence is absolutely universally hated

Weird. Maybe he spent too much time on ChatGPT and got AI psychosis.

Are these ARM Chromebooks actually fully hackable to use any other Linux OS? AFAIK Google upstreams DTBs for them?

Might become more interesting if the Android powered laptop rumors are true.

I am never using ChromeOS ever. The reasons are too many to list here.

I am never using ChromeOS. The reasons are too many to list here

no, thanks

Some of us actually want to get work done

Ragebait pandemic spread here too?

But I don't want to.

I'll use Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, ReactOS, Haiku, anything but not ChromeOS.

No, no I can't.

What is that terrible font? I've never seen an "h" look like that

My initial guess was that migrating to a non-MacOS machine precludes the freedom to view the original Futura typeface on one's personal website. "The Future" must be some shoddy free alternative.

Except "The Future" is a paid typeface inspired by Futura and designed by the Klim Type Foundry. [0] The odd lowercase "h" is an alternative glyph probably meant for display sizes. [1] In addition to this for some reason the author is using the Light weight font for body text instead of Regular weight...

[0]: I love Söhne – https://klim.co.nz/blog/soehne-design-information/

[1]: https://klim.co.nz/fonts/the-future/#open-type/ss06/example

“Liquid Glass and Apple's software incompetence is absolutely universally hated,”

Author is in a bubble. I know many iPhone users and none complain about Liquid Glass. When it landed on my phone, I shrugged.

The idea that I could do the things I do regularly on a Chromebook is laughable in the extreme, and I'm not even that much of a crazy power user. No thanks.

But why?

I'm relatively uniquely qualified to weigh in here... I've been linux-native for decades now on my home desktops (debian), and the last time I used windows for work was ~2005-ish with work Mac laptops, and "disposable" chromebooks at home for personal use + travel.

1) It started with Crouton (open source, "let's get access to the underlying linux system"), and worked pretty well. IIRC you had to switch to "dev mode" to get access to it.

2) Crostini and all the layer-cake isolation is wildly impressive! ...it's more VM-based with suuuper adjudicated interaction boundaries between `chromeos` and the underlying linux vm.

Arch overview: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...

Seneschal (file management/isolation): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...

Sommelier (gui passthrough/punch-through): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...

3) I've recently (intentionally) switched to their new "Baguette" beta VM/Container (you can talk to google AI mode about it, but general access docs and links are fairly sparse: "...a ChromeOS architectural shift (arriving around v142-146) that enables containerless Linux Virtual Machines, running directly via KVM instead of LXD. It removes the middle container layer for increased efficiency and flexibility, allowing for advanced features like direct PCI passthrough, while providing improved storage management compared to legacy Crostini."

4) I think over the last ~15 years I've gone from 4gb => 8gb => 16gb (just recently) and sticking with "premium-ish" dev-centric laptops (mostly: linux, git, web dev, inkscape, random hacking, etc). Currently the Acer Spin 714, previously Samsung XE930QCA... both "tablet adjacent" with full fliparound or "tent style" for watching a movie or doodling with styluses.

Bang-for-Buck, I was able to get the Spin714 for ~$300 @ 16gb ram (used-ish, off ebay) which is a STEAL, and similar story for the Samsung one. They're definitely very capable machines, and treating them as "dumb terminals with a VM I can pop open and scp files to a remote host or git push" is fantastic!

HOWEVER: beware! Google w/ Baguette is stupidly complicated on how to open a port on the device itself for other computers to be able to access servers on the local device. I argued with the google AI for like an hour trying to figure out the best way to allow `git pull my-chromebook.localdomain:./Git/some-repo` and eventually had to settle on a raw `ssh` reverse proxy pipe where I was pulling from `my-other-machine.localdomain:localhost:2222:./Git/some-repo` which was forwarded back (over SSH) to the chromebook itself.

It used to be that you could rationally: `python -m http`, open an "enable port forwarding" thingy in the terminal settings and be able to connect to the service w/o much ceremony. Nowadays they're effectively nanny-ifying the OS and it's getting much harder to do the same thing (removing visible UI for port forwarding, needing hidden settings deep links or `chrome://flags` stuff to be able to access a server/service RUNNING ON YOUR OWN MACHINE FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN NETWORK). Supposedly the cool kids are using tailscale or whatever, but it's literally `localhost<->localhost` and I don't want to have to set up a VPN or whatever to make that work, I just want to doodle on local web services in a VM on a machine that can get stolen and not end up losing all my personal/private files.

Also, ask google AI mode: "when is google phasing out chromebook and chromeos and presumably near-native linux support on their machines?" => """Court documents and executive statements reveal a plan to retire the existing ChromeOS software stack by 2034. This legacy system is expected to be replaced by a unified platform internally codenamed "Project Aluminium," which migrates ChromeOS fully onto the Android tech stack."""

...so ~8 more years of `chromeos`/`linux` and then it'll no longer be the year of linux on the desktop!

Yes, they can be very comfortable and very capable machines, but they're losing a bit of their central spirit and developer-friendliness over time.

Sounds like the author could have used just about any laptop in the world and it would serve him well.

So, what's the point of the article?

I am Linux user, moving from a terrible macOS to a dying Chromebook OS, has to be the worst take by 2026 standards.

Death to liquid glass!

Why would I do that?

I love Liquid Glass. I think a lot of the complaints are whiny and pedantic. I do agree a bit of tender love and care could be used to clean up some GUI elements, but people act like Liquid Glass fried their logic board and rendered their machine utterly unusable.

The problem is, on iOS it's buggy. Floating opaque rectangles blocking you from seeing what you're doing. Software keyboard not being accounted for in the layout so you can't click buttons. It looks different; sure, whatever. It's getting in the way of actually using it that raises ire.

Interesting. I mean, I completely believe you, but I've been using macOS 26/iOS 26 since release, and have not run into any issues like you are describing. I have experienced the keyboard issue, but it was on one specific website, so I am not sure how much of that can be attributed to Liquid Glass or the device OS compared to the website itself.

I have other keyboard issues, but I cannot confidently attribute them to Liquid Glass.

I mean I could. I could also do fent. But I don't.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

No.

TL;DR: The author traded a full-fledged workstation with “Liquid Glass” for a web browser with a keyboard.

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