I only rarely make technology posts here that are just about… tech products. But every now and then, it’s warranted, usually when I learn something or figure something out.
I just did just that.
I’ve had a Chromebook almost since the beginning since as a veteran tech guy who often has to do various kinds of testing on multiple actual devices, it’s sort of a useful thing to have. Plus they’re traditionally so cheap as to basically be free, and they have generally been small with decent battery life, which makes them good for “need a just in case computer but maybe not a real computer” when traveling. Even though the most successful Chromebooks are basically built like toys. Or Solo cups.
In short, the Chromebooks that most people and schools have are just “not real computers” and feel that way and it’s always been hard hard to spend more than $99 or $149 or whatever on a Chromebook because all you get is Chrome OS (a browser, basically), so dropping several hundred or more on that feels like a mistake.
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Now, Chrome OS has this “Linux development environment” in the “Advanced” menu that you can enable. And when you enable it, it asks you how much space to dedicate to Linux, suggests 10GB (i.e. not much), and then if you proceed, it installs some stuff and drops you into a console. As in, text-based shell. As an old Linux guy, I enabled it on my toy Chromebooks just because, and sort of used it for ping and sftp and stuff when I needed them while carrying my Chromebook.
I figured that was it. I mean, they only suggest 10GB, they drop you in a bare shell, they call it a “development environment,” and they stick it in the “Advanced” menu and mention it nowhere else in the universe.
I’m an idiot and I’m out of touch with the tech community. Because it took me all these years since the release of Chrome OS to stumble across someone online posting that the “development environment” was actually Debian and that Google’s Chrome OS Debian distro configuration in their “development environment” is actually 100% preconfigured for integration and support with Chrome OS devices, including full GUI environment support.
“No way,” I thought. So as an immediate stress test, fully ready to scoff at people not knowing what they’re talking about, I hopped into the Linux development environment (read: bare shell window without much installed) and used apt-get to install Darktable.
And here’s the thing… It just worked.
Darktable was added to my Chrome OS menu. And then, it literally just worked. So then I installed the TTF Microsoft fonts from non-free, the LibreOffice GNOME widgets support, and then downloaded the latest .deb LibreOffice and installed it with dpkg. And… It just worked. Beautifully and without a single hiccup. LibreOffice was also added to my Chrome OS menu. And it’s perfect.
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At this point I’m freaking out, because also you are relieved of all the stuff that makes Linux a PITA normally, which amounts to driver support and configuration and generally getting to an environment, on your specific hardware, that works well and supports all the built-ins. Audio, graphics, ports, net, along with sleep/wake and all of that stuff. But Chrome OS takes care of all of this, and I spent a few minutes banging on it to see if I could break the Linux apps, and really, they just work, and behave like any other Chrome OS window. It’s thoroughly, blessedly seamless.
This took me to like 1:00 am on the evening when I was testing it all out, and I went to bed with the full knowledge that suddenly I wanted a better Chromebook, and with the suspicion that this might be a great way to get a great Linux laptop with the entire universe of desktop applications available to it for not much money.
And I was right. Popped over to Best Buy’s website the next day and found a 15.6″ HD resolution machine from Acer with 8GB ram and 128GB permanent storage and a recent six-core Core i3 and decent speakers… in stock for “pickup in about an hour” for all of $260.
I have now purchased said device. I immediately enabled the “Linux development environment,” allocated it 90GB instead of 10GB, and installed the whole universe. Because of the degree to which it’s seamless, you can just treat Chrome OS the same way you treat the GNOME or KDE workspace… Browser windows run as a Chrome OS process in the ChromeOS environment, and just about everything else I start runs as a Linux process in the Linux environment, but from a front-end perspective, it’s all just your desktop and desktop windows and you really don’t see any indication of the two different sandboxes. It all just works.
And for $260, it’s a just plain full fledged laptop. Very solid sound, solid screen, thin, lightish, very long battery life, generates almost no heat, good build quality, and significantly faster (given the generations gap) than the 2012 Core i7 17″ Macbook Pro I’ve been nursing along, without losing much screen size at 15.6″ vs. 17″. It’s far nicer than the 16″ Windows laptop my parents recently bought, for about half the price, because you’re getting that Chromebook discount.
Brand new. Real laptop. Great Linux environment and support. $260.
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This is the stuff of legend. Like, I got an amazing deal on what actually becomes a full-fledged laptop, brand new, Linux-ready, without any of the headaches of installing and configuring, since the Chrome OS part of things effectively does that for you. They aren’t marketing this and I’m sure it’s for marketing-centric reasons. But for tech folk, you can’t afford not to do this. And since this is a Chrome OS thing, it’ll work on any Chromebook you can get your hands on.
So just pick the nicest Chromebook that’s on sale for peanuts at any given point, or choose a nice used market unit since resale value on Chromebooks is nonexistent. Buy it, enable Linux in the “Advanced” menu, drop into what is actually Debian, and just start trucking all your favorite applications into it, bam, bam, bam. Only caveat is that I’d recommend 8GB or 16GB RAM since your plan is to run native desktop applications.
I hope they don’t figure this loophole out and start charging an extra $200 or $400 for the “Linux enabled” versions anytime soon, because I’d love to follow this path the next time I have to upgrade as well. It’s mad good.