[HN Gopher] Linux on Chromebooks just might get me through a mas...
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Linux on Chromebooks just might get me through a masters in
computer science
Author : every
Score : 17 points
Date : 2021-06-13 21:19 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aboutchromebooks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aboutchromebooks.com)
| azinman2 wrote:
| And why wouldn't it? CS education is rarely taxing in terms of
| processor/memory requirements. I doubt the curriculum is all that
| different than 10 years ago or more with far less specs. It's
| about theory and writing algorithms. And if this is a program
| specializing in ML, the models are still likely to be toy, and
| anything more can use cloud computing like Google's Collab.
| shams93 wrote:
| You might not even need an egpu if you are using google collab
| which provides much faster gpus for free.
| comprev wrote:
| It does seem a rather unnecessarily complicated task given much
| cheaper second hand/refurbished units could be picked up on eBay
| and happily run a Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu Linux.
| johndoe0815 wrote:
| I don't understand why people buy expensive Chromebooks - the
| author's Samsung device seems to cost $699 refurbished (16 GB
| RAM/128 GB SSD). To compare, a basic configuration Macbook Air M1
| (8 GB RAM/256 GB SSD) can be bought for $899 new with education
| discount; if you're lucky, you can also buy a Thinkpad X13 at
| similar prices.
| Syonyk wrote:
| It depends on the Chromebook, but having owned a personal
| Chromebook Pixel of the first two generations, it's because,
| the Pixel at least, represented something that I couldn't find
| anywhere else. In no particular order:
|
| * We MUST MAKE MORE 3:2 screens. Content is not wide, except
| video which I don't watch. Content is vertical. A 3:2 screen
| makes for an amazing laptop shape that is very well suited to
| the way humans view content, especially on the web.
|
| * I've done computer security stuff for a while. Chromebooks
| are, by far, the best computer security model I've seen.
| Trusted boot, hashed root filesystems, fast updates that are as
| painless as possible (they even keep entered text in textareas
| on pages). They are, by default, secure enough that I would log
| into my core accounts on someone else's Chromebook (given a
| fresh reboot to ensure it wasn't in developer mode - physical
| firmware attacks aren't in the scope of things I worry about
| from people I know). Yet, I can twiddle a few keys and get one
| to be a properly nice Linux laptop with all sorts of great
| features, that also manages to "just work."
|
| * OS resolution scaling is amazing. Eyes tired at the end of a
| day? A keystroke or two and you've rescaled the entire UI to
| match. Throw in the super high res, high def modes on the high
| DPI screens, and it's good for just about anything.
|
| * Almost everything can be done on the web today, even if one
| probably shouldn't. I've used them as primary computers for
| many years, and I only rarely ran into something that I
| couldn't do (or couldn't do with Crouton and a Linux chroot
| environment). Those things included "a handful of Windows
| applications" (wine covers a lot) and "some kernel interfaces
| for Linux Internals classes" (the kernel simply lacks things
| that the OS doesn't need).
|
| I know it's popular to hate Chromebooks, but if you're willing
| to toss them in developer mode for a few things, the value you
| get for your money, even at the high end, is legitimately
| impressive.
| canadianfella wrote:
| > except video which I don't watch. Content is vertical. A
| 3:2 screen makes for an amazing laptop shape that is very
| well suited to the way humans view content, especially on the
| web.
|
| You say humans, but you mean you and the other 3 people that
| "don't watch video".
| salawat wrote:
| Give me an SSD and an OS distro on a thumb drive with USB3.0
| support, and you get the same guarantees computer security-
| wise on literally any UEFI secure boot enabled system.
|
| Fast updates are enabled by heavily locking in what user's
| are able to do with them. No exotic checks to be done.
|
| I am not impressed by Chromebooks in those regards at all.
| Different strokes I suppose.
|
| I might give you the screen, but to be honest, most of the
| time Chromebooks find their way to me it's because they're
| broken, and I'm everybody's computer guy of last resort due
| to high tolerance for frustration. All of them have had their
| screens or MOBO's rendered inoperable. Further, I
| philosophically reject anything that cannot be side loaded or
| is so locked down you can't load software onto it from
| external media.
|
| Yes, security people may love that, but in reality, the
| entire point of processors is to run code. If I can't get my
| code to the processor that needs to run it without hostage
| negotiations, then that is not a useful machine to me. That
| is a niche PoS. Which all power to those who need it as such.
| Just isn't high on my list of things to actively purchase.
| Maxburn wrote:
| This. For a while I did the Chromebook thing and it was
| actually pretty nice running android apps on it along with
| chrome OS but just kept slamming into chrome limitations.
| Looked at all the hoops necessary to sideload or try linux
| stuff and noped out to a regular X1 carbon thinkpad. Common
| Linux distros on a regular laptop is so much easier.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| I bought the original Chromebook Pixel when it was new for
| something like $1.3k. At the time, I believed this the best way
| to get a slim laptop with a high resolution screen and good
| linux support. Debian did run well on it, as I expected, but I
| soon came to regret the purchase and will never buy hardware
| from Google again.
|
| EDIT:
|
| It lost audio about 3 or 4 months after it was out of warranty,
| both out of the speakers and headphone jack. Left speaker
| failed first, then the right, then the headphone jack. I can
| only assume it was some sort of hardware fault, since sound no
| longer worked in ChromeOS either (and HDMI audio continued
| working in both). But good fucking luck getting such a thing
| fixed on a product like that from a company like that. Now I
| have a Dell XPS with a 1080p screen, which is good enough,
| particularly considering Dell has a much better reputation for
| support/repairs.
| thekyle wrote:
| Why did you regret the purchase?
| wearywanderer wrote:
| My edit includes some details. Basically, the warranty was
| too short and when audio (except HDMI out) broke and I
| couldn't get it fixed.
|
| There was also the matter of the secure boot nonsense,
| where if you press the wrong key on boot, secure mode would
| be re-enabled. With secure boot re-enabled, the only image
| that would boot would be a ChromeOS installation image,
| which would wipe your linux install. So you couldn't re-
| flip that secure boot bit without losing your linux
| installation. This bit me once, before I got better about
| regular backups..
| [deleted]
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