An Engineer's take on Chrome OS

http://synack.me/blog/an-engineers-take-on-chrome-os

by Me1000 • 13 years ago

60 24 13 years ago

Spittie• 13 years ago

Just in case anyone is interested: I haven't tried it, since I don't own a Chromebook, but Crouton (https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton) seems to do exactly what he's doing in the article, only automated.

rosstafarian• 13 years ago

The pixel seems like a total waste from a hardware standpoint, everything he mentioned would work just as well one of those $250 samsung chromebooks. He also had to fight with the os to get anything useful done. Again i can see myself spending a few hundred bucks for a laptop to carry with me and not worry about to get some basic tasks done, but why would anyone want a pixel?

cliffbean• 13 years ago

The Pixel's screen is a reason why some people want it.

raldi• 13 years ago

Also, unlike the $250 laptops, it doesn't feel like garbage in your hands.

ConstantineXVI2• 13 years ago

I'm still perplexed by the Pixel, but I'm in love with my ARM Chromebook as an 'away' computer for it's simplicity. It's not a full PC, but 90% of the time browser + SSH is all I need away from the desk anyway, and it does both very well (not to mention the keyboard and trackpad are far better than most laptops in the $300 range I've used)

Pedantic note: you can tweak the font size for the SSH app from it's options ('right'-click the app, it's not exposed in the UI)

habosa• 13 years ago

I feel the same way. My Samsung ARM Chromebook is one of the best gadgets I have ever purchased.

peatmoss• 13 years ago

My wife and father both use the Samsung ARM chromebook (guess who doesn't like tech support). I was a CR-48 tester too. I love ChromeOS, but I'm kind of disappointed in how little uptake there has been of NaCl. In particular, if there were a way to run a decently feature-filled emacs in a tab, I'd probably make the jump.

graue2• 13 years ago

This makes me think - is there any reason you couldn't compile Emacs or Vim in Emscripten, and adapt it for the web? Maybe with some kind of in-browser terminal emulator? Quick googling suggests no one has tried this yet... I find that surprising.

(The Vim bindings in CodeMirror[1] are surprisingly decent, but it's still not the real thing.)

[1] http://codemirror.net/demo/vim.html

jyu• 13 years ago

Stuff like this is where search in its current form fails.

Action.IO allows for browser based coding, and potentially development in the cloud. Heroku started out doing development in the cloud before they pivoted to PAAS.

htilford• 13 years ago

I've been using https://github.com/chjj/tty.js/ to vim on my pixel, with tty.js running on my linode.

ahelwer• 13 years ago

OT, although it was mentioned in the article:

I've found that the ctrl+[ shortcut is much more effective than ESC for switching out of insert mode in vim. Is this shortcut not commonly known?

zachlatta• 13 years ago

I'm always surprised when others don't know about it. To me, using escape defeats the purpose of Vim. It's almost like having to reach for your mouse.

Nick_C• 13 years ago

Unless you've swapped CapsLock for Esc. Then it's easy as pie. In ~/.Xmodmap:

    ! Swap Caps Lock with Esc
    remove Lock = Caps_Lock
    keysym Escape = Caps_Lock
    keysym Caps_Lock = Escape
    add Lock = Caps_Lock

recoiledsnake• 13 years ago

>Boot into recovery mode with Esc-Refresh-Power, hold Ctrl-D at the right moment, confirm that you want to wipe the stateful partition, and away you go. Yes, switching to Developer Mode requires deleting all non-OS data on the Chromebook.

Why would you need to wipe the main partition in order to be able to dual boot? Also, I hear that this scary screen comes up every time you boot for 30 seconds unless you press Ctrl-D everytime.

http://liliputing.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads...

luser001• 13 years ago

Based on 10 seconds of thinking, maybe they want to prevent you from installing a suid binary in your home directory when in developer mode and then somehow running it in the regular mode.

Nursie• 13 years ago

What's scary about it? It's the bootloader telling you it's in dev mode and not checking signatures.

And yes it sits there for 30 seconds. Ctrl-d boots immediately from internal storage and Ctrl-u from USB or SD.

I'm not sure why you need to wipe when switching between dev and recovery mode. Maybe it's to stop you booting an alternate OS and getting at ChromeOS user data without a password?

ConstantineXVI2• 13 years ago

Developer mode's designed[0] to avoid using it to bypass CrOS's security. The relevant points:

* the 5-minute wipe both hinders access to the owner's data and makes it unlikely the OS can be replaced with a malicious variant without being caught in the act

* the warning screens ensure the owner's aware they're in devmode

* Hiding the Ctrl-D bypass makes it appear the only option is recovery, you won't know about it unless you've enabled devmode yourself.

[0] http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/d...

NoodleIncident• 13 years ago

I feel like we as a community are being wine-racked[1].

I had long ago written off Chromebooks as completely useless for my purposes, but all of the attention being paid to the Pixel really shows off how much ChromeOS is already capable of.

Once you realize that, why not buy a $250 version that does everything the more expensive model does?

[1] In which restaurants place $100 bottles of wine on their racks, not in the real expectation that many will buy it, but to make the other wines look cheaper.

deckiedan2• 13 years ago

I was given a second hand CR-48 when my 'regular' laptop died 4 months ago. I repartitioned it and installed Ubuntu, and have been using it as my primary personal computer since then.

Every time it boots up, it does have an annoying and scary unhappy chromebook, "press space to make chromeos normal" screen, but since I rarely need to boot it from scratch, it's not a big deal.

I have an external 64GB USB stick which I'm using as my main media & other storage, as the on board SSD is tiny. Fast though - LibreOffice opens faster than MS office on Windows... That is in fact one of the most annoying things about it, is the lack of HD space. I have to constantly be aware of how much/little space I have left, and make sure to clear the apt cache frequently, not install too many big packages, etc.

I'm running awesomewm as my main window manager, often with firefox fullscreen when browsing.

Work wise, I'm mainly doing dev ops, and full stack development on this machine. I also do enough media related work that I couldn't use this as my main work computer, and have a work iMac at the office.

It's kind of limited, but I kind of like it. I'm thinking to build a desktop computer (since I have an external screen already) with the beef for working on large photo editing, and using that as a server & workstation when needed, but sticking with this for portability.

I'm not sure I'd buy one - certainly not a pixel at that price... the long battery life is great, the weight and form factor is great, but a better processor and "real" HD would make life quite a lot easier at times.

thingummywut• 13 years ago

So you're saying that the 2.5 year old CR-48's test hardware (2 GB Ram, 1.6 Ghz Atom processor, 16 GB SSD) is why you're not buying a Pixel?

deckiedan2• 13 years ago

No... I can't afford a Pixel, and if I was going to spend that amount of money on a computer, I'd probably buy something with more 'oomph'. Sure a hi-res screen is nice, but apparently not enough content is there to make it really worth while. For DTP and media work, I could see it being really good, but since those applications aren't really ChromeOS friendly (yet?), I don't see the point.

For general web use (browser, email, terminal) a 'regular' chromebook is quite usable - even a 2 year old one.

wavelander• 13 years ago

A much needed perspective. All I've read are the H/W specs. Though I'm still apprehensive about spending so much on it, it does change how I see it. Still, better options seem abound.

teeja• 13 years ago

Reads like an advert.

An Engineer's take on Chrome OS

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