I did try the Linux environment and it isn't too bad. But I don't do development on the ChromeBook. I use a desktop for that. Personally, I don't find working in noisy environments feasible. Even when I was doing my PhD I had a private office.
No, of course not. An M2 MacBook Air is £1k. For £200 you can get a shitty N100 Chromebook which is going to be nowhere near an M2.
I assume he's actually talking about something like the Acer Spin 513 which has an 8-core ARM chip but that is over £400. It apparently has a multicore geekbench score of around 4k compared the the M2 MacBook Air's 10k. So the performance scales with the price.
Still that does seem like quite good value if you are willing to wait twice as long for your compiles...
Or if you use some kind of web-based IDE or remote gateway: you compromise little.
Except that you have to have a network connection to be able to work. Which has bitten me a couple of times (on trains and planes, where I have a lot of free time to do something).
I just bought a much older Acer c7 Chromebook (intel silicon) to install native Linux as an experiment, it's been fun. I wonder do the modern ones allow this or are they more locked down? I'd love to have an ARM based Linux machine without remortgaging my house
The difficulty with ARM Chromebooks is firmware/booting and driver support. With x86 models you can generally just flask mrchromebox's UEFI firmware and you're set, but ARM doesn't really have an equivalent (yet?). I'd suggest starting from https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:ChromeOS to find something well-supported.
Now that said - one of my main computers is an ARM ex-Chromebook running postmarketos that cost $99 new, so it absolutely can works:) You just have to pick hardware that's had its quirks ironed over.
I've got a https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Lenovo_IdeaPad_Flex_3_Chr... ... For the record, I don't recommend this exact model for most people. Audio never worked (for some weird reason that probably boils down to alsa settings) and the touchscreen isn't working right now. Weirdly this doesn't matter for my uses, but obviously that's not great. If I was buying one today I'd skim the wiki to find something that lists everything supported and maybe ask in Matrix if anyone can confirm.
Comments
Which Chromebook is that? Are there some good relatively high-performance ARM ones that aren't nearly like $1000?
here's the link: https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/lenovo-ideapad-slim-3-14-...
I did try the Linux environment and it isn't too bad. But I don't do development on the ChromeBook. I use a desktop for that. Personally, I don't find working in noisy environments feasible. Even when I was doing my PhD I had a private office.
No, of course not. An M2 MacBook Air is £1k. For £200 you can get a shitty N100 Chromebook which is going to be nowhere near an M2.
I assume he's actually talking about something like the Acer Spin 513 which has an 8-core ARM chip but that is over £400. It apparently has a multicore geekbench score of around 4k compared the the M2 MacBook Air's 10k. So the performance scales with the price.
Still that does seem like quite good value if you are willing to wait twice as long for your compiles...
Or if you use some kind of web-based IDE or remote gateway: you compromise little.
Except that you have to have a network connection to be able to work. Which has bitten me a couple of times (on trains and planes, where I have a lot of free time to do something).
I just bought a much older Acer c7 Chromebook (intel silicon) to install native Linux as an experiment, it's been fun. I wonder do the modern ones allow this or are they more locked down? I'd love to have an ARM based Linux machine without remortgaging my house
The difficulty with ARM Chromebooks is firmware/booting and driver support. With x86 models you can generally just flask mrchromebox's UEFI firmware and you're set, but ARM doesn't really have an equivalent (yet?). I'd suggest starting from https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:ChromeOS to find something well-supported.
Now that said - one of my main computers is an ARM ex-Chromebook running postmarketos that cost $99 new, so it absolutely can works:) You just have to pick hardware that's had its quirks ironed over.
Which specific one did you go for?
I've got a https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Lenovo_IdeaPad_Flex_3_Chr... ... For the record, I don't recommend this exact model for most people. Audio never worked (for some weird reason that probably boils down to alsa settings) and the touchscreen isn't working right now. Weirdly this doesn't matter for my uses, but obviously that's not great. If I was buying one today I'd skim the wiki to find something that lists everything supported and maybe ask in Matrix if anyone can confirm.