I am a hardcore Linux user. I went so far as buying Chromebooks to wipe ChromeOS and run Linux on them in the last 5 years. As of late, I have decided to leave ChromeOS alone on my new Pixelbook.
There are two reasons for that decision:
- I just love having the ability to have a pen to draw when I needed to share the screen to explain something for my friends when we talk about technical crap. ChromeOS supports the pen reasonably well with its ability to run Android apps.
- The Linux emulation layer on ChromeOS is actually very good. I can run app-get, gcc, Sublime text, Konsole and most of the apps I want to run.
I figured it is a good tradeoff between convenience and utility. I still have to do my embedded work on my desktop which has a real distro. I am very glad they are bringing the upcoming usb redirection support, so I can do embedded work on my laptop. With GPU acceleration I can play games too, fantastic!
Hardware-wise, the Chromebook Pixel has been a disaster. Every once in a while, the USB-C port just craps out completely and I had to do the SMC reset procedure for it to work again. The other day, I left the laptop battery run dry and when I plugged in to charge and tried to turn it on, the keyboard would flicker like a discotheque with nothing on the screen for like 20 minutes when it was charging up. The hardware is just inconsistent and feels flaky as heck.
But all in all, I am actually quite happy with my Pixelbook purchase. If the hardware/firmware experience could improve a bit, then it would have been a very, very good purchase despite all the hates from Youtube reviewers.
There are two reasons for that decision:
- I just love having the ability to have a pen to draw when I needed to share the screen to explain something for my friends when we talk about technical crap. ChromeOS supports the pen reasonably well with its ability to run Android apps.
- The Linux emulation layer on ChromeOS is actually very good. I can run app-get, gcc, Sublime text, Konsole and most of the apps I want to run.
I figured it is a good tradeoff between convenience and utility. I still have to do my embedded work on my desktop which has a real distro. I am very glad they are bringing the upcoming usb redirection support, so I can do embedded work on my laptop. With GPU acceleration I can play games too, fantastic!
Hardware-wise, the Chromebook Pixel has been a disaster. Every once in a while, the USB-C port just craps out completely and I had to do the SMC reset procedure for it to work again. The other day, I left the laptop battery run dry and when I plugged in to charge and tried to turn it on, the keyboard would flicker like a discotheque with nothing on the screen for like 20 minutes when it was charging up. The hardware is just inconsistent and feels flaky as heck.
But all in all, I am actually quite happy with my Pixelbook purchase. If the hardware/firmware experience could improve a bit, then it would have been a very, very good purchase despite all the hates from Youtube reviewers.