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Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

I'm posting this from a Chromebook Pixel, which I use for all of my development. No crouton, just stock ChromeOS.

This movement is really interesting to me. If I could clone myself, I'd be working on an exokernel in Rust that just exposes a V8 VM, and uses a DOM implementation as the native drawing interface. Processes == tabs...

Of course, there's higher level work that needs to be done to expose more of the machine in JavaScript. Check out http://extensiblewebmanifesto.org/ , signed by Google, Mozilla, and W3C TAG members, as well as #extendthewebforward on Twitter.

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This is off topic but, what happened to your Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon [0]?

0 - http://words.steveklabnik.com/returning-to-free-software-a-g...

I use it primarily for PGP. I've been thinking about trying out Linux from Scratch with it, but haven't had the time.

I made a decision to start using the Chromebook to dogfood this particular vision of computers: I'm not happy that it involves Google, but they're the only one with an implementation that's this far along, unfortunately.

I've been meaning to write on this whole thing, haven't had the time...

Can you give us some insight into how you develop on ChromeOS? What editor do you use? How do you run things like GIT? What surprised you that was so easy? What did you find more difficult that you wish was easier?

I'm the kind of guy who lives in the terminal. The only GUI program I use is a web browser.

I've been trying out Nitrous.io, and it's pretty great. I also SSH into a Digital Ocean droplet too. I just use Vim and git and everything else as normal.

> What surprised you that was so easy?

Mostly that it works.

> What did you find more difficult that you wish was easier?

I still haven't done any international travel with it yet, I bet I'll spend a lot more time using my X1 Carbon then.

I've tried out a little development on a Nitrous box using Vim myself. It seems like it would be possible to be pretty productive in it, if you were really good with Vim and all of the command-line tools. I managed to get some things done, but working with Vim just seemed to put so much friction into things. I try to keep working with Vim enough to get more comfortable/productive in just that, but it seems like a pretty long road.

I tried it out on a VM chromeOS when I was thinking about getting a Chromebook Pixel, but I ended up going with a Macbook instead - seems like more features for the same amount of money.

Have you any experience with VNC clients on ChromeOS? If so, what's the performance like?

I found the following, which mentions Chrome Web Browser, is that equivalent for the sake of applications? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vnc-viewer-for-goo...

I don't use VNC, so I can't give you any advice, sorry :/

A lot of VNC Viewer for Chrome is just the standard RealVNC stuff compiled into NaCl, so you should find the performance to be pretty good. If you've used any of RealVNC's mobile apps you should have a good expectation of what you're getting (except better because you might be using a wired connection & a desktop computer has more power than a mobile device).

Does it not freak you out that your laptop was created by a company that makes billions a year learning everything there is to know about you?

Yes, it absolutely does, and I am very much not happy about it. I am the most anti-Google person I know.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to live in a world of ideals, and so, I must compromise from time to time. As I mentioned elsewhere, I have another machine with 100% free software that I use for PGP when I need to keep secrets.

Where does "must" come from in this case? You could choose to practice browser fetish on anything.

Which other OS is like ChromeOS but without Google?

Linux? FreeBSD? Haiku? There's plenty of choices, and all of them have modern web browsers available (and frankly, better browsers than Chrome. People should really stop drinking google kool aid and take a look at the chrome codebase first before using it).

Not the same thing.

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