Hacker News Reader

Comment by dman | Hacker News Reader

You can install linux on it. I own the previous version of the Pixel and I run ubuntu on it and its close to perfect.

Two things I would change are

1. Improve thermal cooling or move to a underpowered cpu. I have worked around it by rate limiting my CPU to not go over 800 MHz. With a few tweaks, it sips ~8.8W and gives me > 6 hrs of battery life.

2. Make the hinge a bit stiffer.

My only other complaint is that it refuses to install FreeBSD.

View on HN

Did you get touch features working on your older Pixel? I'm very curious about whether the Pixel series would be a good machine for Ubuntu .. care to share your experiences?

Touch sorta works on my Pixel running Debian. By which I mean I can tap on the screen to click, but all of the multi-touch gestures don't work.

I have put absolutely no effort into getting it to work though (honestly I'd disable it entirely if I wasn't too lazy to bother), and a desktop environment like GNOME might be able to configure it to work. I'm not sure there.

Edit: (Multi-touch on the touchpad works fine for me.)

It should be possible to get working. All the drivers are in the chromiumos source repository. Until very recently X was used, so the X server should have the touch support. (Haven't tested on the new Pixel because I don't have one, but the old one, definitely.)

The kernel drivers are in src/third_party/kernel/v3.10 for first-gen pixel, and v3.14 for this one. If you're going to run your own Linux, I'd use that kernel rather than the one the distro provides. Or figure out what patches are different between the two, and cherry-pick those onto your distro's kernel.

I meant 3.8 for the old pixel, btw. Doh.

Multitouch on the touchpad works out of the box on ubuntu including gestures. Touch on the screen works too, but I dont use it since I dont like smudging my screen. If there is interest.

Is the touchpad as nice as a Macbook? I have a work provided Macbook Pro but I dread having to buy one myself.

Yes it is as good.

Is there enough storage?

I write C/C++ code on the machine, so my storage needs are minimal. If I was to guess my total storage footprint on the device would be less than 1 Gig over the base ubuntu desktop install. The machine has 64 Gigs of storage, which is more than enough for my needs.

> My only other complaint is that it refuses to install FreeBSD.

Did you try installing SeaBIOS on it?

I did not attempt to update the version of SeaBIOS installed on it. Do you think upgrading SeaBIOS will allow me to install FreeBSD?

was FreeBSD your first choice, then after abortive attempts you installed Linux?

I have been a Linux user for sometime, so when I got the laptop I first installed linux on it. Subsequently I have grown rather fond of dtrace, so I like to use FreeBSD when the environment permits. So I tried installing FreeBSD on the machine in November last year.

thanks

> You can install linux on it. I own the previous version of the Pixel and I run ubuntu on it and its close to perfect.

Yeah, just like buying a Windows laptop to install Linux, meaning using the laptop for another purpose than it is being sold for.

Laptops are sold to be general purpose computing devices, not to "run Windows".

The reasoning you gave seems to be some sort of fully general counterargument to ever installing GNU/Linux, as there are hardly any devices that are "sold to run GNU/Linux".

In general installing GNU/Linux on devices not meant for it is, indeed, a bad idea. Bad drivers will usually make your computing experience a hell filled with non-REISUB-able freezes and other goodies. If you're like me and you can handle all the crap then it's fine. Otherwise stick to Windows. Or, better yet, just buy a Mac. A Dell developer's edition or a Thinkpad might be problem-free. Might. I wouldn't put money on it, though, especially with future regressions likely to fuck something up.

I get what you're saying, but I feel like the example you're providing is off. When people buy a laptop, the major selling point isn't that it runs Windows, it's typically the hardware in it. It just happens to come with Windows because that's what most people use. A major selling point of the Chromebook is that it runs Chrome OS, so in this case yeah installing Linux on it kind of defeats the purpose of buying a Chromebook.

The reason people like to buy Chromebooks to run Linux is that chromeos uses the Linux kernel, so all the hardware has to have Linux drivers available. Most laptops have at least some issues with Linux. Even my thinkpad, a line known for Linux comparability, can't use the discrete graphics card under linux.

The major selling point is that it runs Windows which runs the software and games they want, and their old data. Try offering one with BeOS or even Linux and see how many you sell.

Out of curiosity what laptop do you use? What do you do on your laptop? How does the vendor that you bought the laptop from enable your intended use (out of the box)?

A Asus laptop with Windows 8.1.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com