I got myself a Chromebook (Acer R13 with ARM CPU, because I like to make it difficult for myself) quite a while ago, and it has been a mixed experience.
Now, however, with Chrome OS 76, I am actually rather satisfied both the the Acer R13 and with Chrome OS and the things I want to do finally just work!
General Laptop Aspects
Thinking about my Acer R13 as a laptop, it is quite decent:
- very good battery time (although it drains when left it sleeping for long)
- very quick startup/shutdown
- simple to use Google login and Google docs
- display, keyboard and touchpad is fine, weight is low, it is silent
- chrome OS works well
- performance is acceptable (mostly web browsing)
Developer and productivity aspects
I do web development, using Node.js, Vue, git and a web browser (it is a quite simple and limited toolset). This now works very well.
- “Linux (beta)” works out of the box for my purposes (it is now finally stable on R13).
- lxterminal gets me a simple tabbed terminal application.
- Chrome OS 76 comes with virtual desks (very convenient).
- nodejs (for ARM8) works perfectly
A few things to note about the Linux environment
- it runs in a container, you can run more than one if you want, but the default container is Debian stretch (9.9) which is all good for me
- since it is a container, you don’t access it at “localhost” but rather an IP that you get running “hostname -I” (for web development purposes or admin-UI)
- the files in your linux home directory are accessible directly from ChromeOS under “Linux Files”, if you want to open something in Chrome, use Ctrl+O and just browse normally (it just works, it is just simple)
Conclusions
If you need a decent laptop at a good price, and you want Linux on it, a Chromebook is a very realistic option.
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