What are chromebooks like?
>>54772027
Good specs/price
Shit OS
>>54772047
This but ChromeOS will become so much more manageable once chromebooks get Google Play Store support.
>>54772027
Specs are average at most, but aren't that bad for the price. OS is shit.
>>54772027
Shit specs/price/OS
>>54772027
Pretty shit, just buy a thinkpad and install gentoo.
>cheap
>good for writing notes and while travelling
>don't need to worry about updates
>boots in couple seconds and instantly on the web
>can be used to play local movies and shit
Cons:
>no real software
>linux can be installed but tends to break easily due to Chrome updates
>>54772027
school gave us chromebooks to use
basically a portable google chrome
stopped taking my laptop to school
because the chromebook has zero startup
pc had like a 3 min startup
really cool to whip out when u need to search something
or look like ur typing ur doc up in class
when u really just on 4chan
would recommend it!
>>54772027
>$400
>1080p IPS
>16GB SSD
>full magnesium chassis
>4GB RAM
Why don't manufacturers just offer an unlocked BIOS Windows version with user servicable SSD?
>>54772099
Fuck Gentoo. Overweight teenagers in their moms dark basement use Gentoo while masturbating in a puddle of their own drool.
Download CentOS. Welcome to Adulthood.
Comfy, kinda useless.
pros: useful and good. additional google drive space with new models, which is useful.
con: no flux-like or 'night mode' i guess?
if you're a big dumb baby who cannot live without a commandline, it's bad. if you live inside a web browser, it's a viable machine/kidputer/momputer
Honestly? Better than I expected.
I have a HP Chromebook 11 (G1) and it's surprisingly good for $249. The speakers are louder and clearer than I expected and they're hidden inside the keyboard, which is also pretty good. Not the best keyboard every built, but whatever. The plastic trackpad is incredibly smooth and accurate. Definitely feels cheap; there's a lot of creaking and bending in frightening places. The performance is pretty OK. It can handle things you need it to handle. Once you go over 30 tabs, though, it starts to lag a bit. I've come to prefer the Chrome OS file manager over the Windows file manager, although it's pretty flimsy. Something always goes wrong with it: either the thumbnails won't load or it crashes entirely, but I've never actually lost files. I like how it's organized.
The display is one of my favorite features. It's an IPS display that gets unnecessarily bright. It's got accurate color reproduction and pretty nice viewing angles.
The battery is a downside. It's advertised as 6 hours but honestly I usually only get about 4 unless I keep my brightness all the way down and turn off Bluetooth. It charges via MicroUSB, which means it recharges really quickly if the computer is off (like, in under 30 minutes), but it takes forever (like, over 4 hours) to charge fully if you're using it.
It has pretty standard offline capabilities: creating/editing documents and presentations in Google Drive, viewing and managing files like pictures, videos, PDFs, etc.
Basically, anything you can do on a cheap, shitty Windows laptop, you can do on a Chromebook. Just don't expect to do anything intense like play World of Warcraft or anything. The closest thing you'll get to ""gaming"" on a Chromebook is playing Angry Birds. There's even a nice GarageBand ripoff called Soundtrap that works well...sort of. You should be able to slap together a little 3-minute chiptune cover quickly. It crashes a lot and it's really processor intensive, but hey, at least it exists.
One big, big, big flaw.
It locks you out if you haven't been online in a while. The field where you'd normally put your password in gets replaced by a huge yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it, and when you click it, it prompts you to connect to wifi, then put in your password. Sucks if you have no internet and want to fap to offline porn.
>>54772298
This tbqfh
>>54772027
Good prices until recently
There's been a push for these ultrabook-like Chromebooks and now the ones with the best specs end up being as expensive as a cheap Windows laptop
ChromeOS is a beauty. If you're already invested in the botnet, it really is comfy. Android apps are coming soon too, so stuff like Word and actual IDEs will come to ChromeOS soon.
>>54772027
I'm buying one as soon as you can install Android apps
Where I work we have deployed a large fleet of Chromebooks to our users. They are very reliable and rarely have any problems. On a enterprise management side, they are by far the easiest set of devices to create policies and configurations for.
>>54772875
Why dont you just use remix os on it. Native android support and no botnet.
>>54772140
You forgot godlike battery life
>>54772298
>>54772845
Not on a desktop just get an ubuntu flavor.
>>54772027
Chromebooks are just webrowsers.
Chromebooks flashed with seabios are actual computers.
>>54772916
its a mostly buggy peice of crap and most likley lacks driver support
>>54772068
There's literally no reason not to install a linux distro on it instead of keeping that general market aimed bullshit on your computer
>>54772258
Because the license for windows will inflate the price to at least 500$
>>54772298
>CentOS
I think you mean fedora
>>54772027
Imagine a low end laptop that does nothing but run Google Chrome. That's basically what they're like.
Chromebooks are comfy if you don't need to do any extensive work. I imagine they will be even more useful now that the newer ones can run android apps.
>>54773441
did you miss Google I/O 2016?
>>54773549
Oh I forgot, they can run cell phone apps now. Woo.
>>54773441
>they do nothing
How is that true when you can replace chromeos with a full debian distro...
asus c201
libreboot w/ read only screw
linux-libre kernel
debian jessie armhf port
tplink tl-wn722n wireless module open firmware ath9k_htc
fully deblobbed - no botnet
super comfy 8+ hours shitposting battery
>>54773564
Considering they couldn't run shit before that's a step up
>>54773624
I was talking about using a Chromebook as a Chromebook. Of course it's decent once you get one set up as a proper computer
I've got a Cr-48 with SeaBIOS so I can even run regular distros. Would still be my main laptop if it didn't suffer from a snapped hinge. I want to pick up another, but my current laptop's better anyway
>dat rubberized, logoless everything
>>54773664
barely
>>54773624
>>54773699
How hard is it to install a proper OS on a chromebook? I have been thinking about getting the newest e series 14 inch thinkpad or just a chromebook for those rare occasions I am on the move, but I am unsure which to get(will probably slap some linux distro on either, cromeos is not something I want to use at all).
>>54772258
>not 16GB ram
>>54773564
Most people don't need Windows, get used to it. Android and Web apps are more than enough. Plus they are much more secure, faster and offer and the battery life is a dream compared to windows laptops.
>>54774103
Where did I say anything about Windows?
Can someone please correct that picture.
>>54773780
General steps are enable developer mode. that will allow you to boot from usb or sd. setup a distro of your choice on usb/sd then boot into it. once nice n comfy transfer over to onboard flash.
>>54774209
here you go famalam
>>54772047
Meme opinion
Chromeos offers the best Web browsing experience and by far the smoothest window managing experience on Linux
The ability to chroot an entire distro through crouton makes it literally one of the most useful operating systems of all time
I run chromium os off of a thumb drive on my thinkpad
>>54774775
>Chromeos offers the best Web browsing experience
>>54774791
Are you high? It's literally the smoothest and fastest it gets. And all window managers suck balls compared to chromewm. Wayland might change that but not right now
>>54774819
>smoothest and fastest
Nice memes. I couldn't give less of a shit if a website takes an extra millisecond to load, I'll take the less shitty browsers over Chrome any day.
most of the time i am ssh'd into a server and it works great for that.
>>54774833
>extra millisecond
Try 20-30% faster than a regular desktop Web browser. Not to mention chrome actually is a great Web browser to begin with great extension support.
Also, chromium os has some of the best trackpad drivers out there
>>54774861
>Try 20-30% faster than a regular desktop Web browser
Let me rephrase that then. I couldn't give less of a shit if it takes 20-30% longer to load, the browser's still shit.
>>54774887
Explain then
What do you use a Web browser for apart from actually using it?
>>54774904
I use it, but Chrome lack features suck as side tabs, data compression, tab stacks, a side bar, a mail client, etc.
>>54774914
I guarantee that if you used a chromebook you would like it
>side tabs
Come on.
>>54774933
I have a Chromebook, it was ass till I installed a real OS
>side tabs
Very useful when you've got more than a Facebook tab and a YouTube tab open.
>>54774394
Chen you fucking traitor :(
just kinda comfy, best way to describe them
cheap, decent specs for the price, chromeOS is light and good for shitposting and watching youtube and shit
ssd's are small but everything is supposed to be on google drive anway
Pros:
>good battery life
>cheap as shit
>cheaper when used
>long lifespan if you buy quality shit
>usually "good" netbook processors, Celery N2840's are good enough to run AutoCAD 2014 smoothly on windows at least
>chromeOS idles at 200mb of ram
>chrome as the browser is significantly more lightweight than on windows
>press power button, 2 seconds later you're at the login screen, 2 seconds after entering your password you're at your desktop ready to go
>android/google play store coming soon
>crouton to install a full debian based distro side by side, or install any distro if you're good at command line stuff
other options to install seperate distros aswell
>automatic background updates you never even notice
>put it in dev mode, you get the full linux terminal through crosh and can use things like:
vim
htop
emacs
tmux
a bunch of other shit in chromebrew
>get alot of (You)'s in desktop threads
>no moving internal parts, no fans, no HDD, no cd drives
and last but not least
>almost FOSS, chromiumOS is open source, as is the browser, and many of the utilities are under the GNU GPL, even the hardware is unlocked chinkshit that you can do whatever you want with, only issue is the bios, which can be replaced by seabios
Cons:
>small storage space, not all models upgradeable
>putting device in dev mode or moving to the beta or dev channels voids your warranty
>certain brands make garbage chromebooks, namely asus
>chromeOS as a linux distro is fairly limited, as it has no native package manager and isnt really based on one particular distro, chromebrew is a good alternative but the repository is small
>really piss poor file manager, cant rename zip diskette biscuits
>low quality webcams
>really limited customization
you can rice, but not much
>>54772027
used one 2014/2015.
Printing via USB cable is not possible and printing via WLAN is just possible for a minority of printers.
>>54772180
18+ site, please leave.
It's an 80 dollar browser.
Could be slightly less shit and more useful for educational purposes once they add support for Android apps.
>>54772140
>>linux can be installed but tends to break easily due to Chrome updates
then use firefox
>>54772027
For anyone on this board they're a cheap laptop you can put linux on. There is no other use case. You can not put windows on it for some odd reason, and you can not live with chrome os because it's literally the chrome browser and that's it.
>>54775937
ChromeOS is more than the browser anon
>>54775458
I think he meant chromeos and by installing linux he probably meant chrubuntu, because depending on what chromebook you get, it may or may not require you to take it apart to put linux on it
>>54776832
yeah but doesn't it have a way small selection of programs?
>>54772298
CentOS is not so great for laptops to be honest. I used it about 2 months and it wasn't fun. If you don't need to run anything new, it's great.
>>54776912
wait for the google play store
also, you can run just about anything linux, issue is that you have to manually install it
no sudo apt-get install ____, you'd have to move individual files yourself
i know a few people got gimp and firefox working on their c720's
Theyre pretty good, but the Os is shit tier. Luckily nearly every x86 Chromebook supports full Linux and windows installation.
>>54777018
you can use git-browser to find source packages, or install chromebrew to do most of that right now. This is without using a really convenient chroot; just chromeos. But you can install the google play store right now from the chrome web store.
>>54777173
The ARM Chromebooks support full linux installations, or just chroots. Forget about Windows on ARM though.
>>54772027
better than windows shitbooks, not as good as macbook pros
>>54777011
Exactly, stability is way more important that up to date software.
>>54772027
if you have a copy of Windows 8
put Chrome in Windows 8 mode
>What are chromebooks like?
exactly like that without the Windows part
>>54772027
They are very good linux machines.
>>54772027
ChromeOS wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to actually rely on their Google Drive office suite and could do others things without having to launch into dev mode and load up a linux distro. Plus being able to play DCSS locally would be nice as well.
>>54772027
You know those shitty Walmart laptops? Imagine that without a usable OS.
is there any legit reason to buy chromebooks while you can download chromium os builds?
>>54779536
android apps are coming
>>54779536
Chromium OS can be updated into Chrome OS and receive the extra drivers/nonfree binaries and autoupdates, so prob not
>>54772027
The OS is okay if you're the type of user for it. I used a chromebook for years for college (computer science and engineering major, so it got a fair bit of use), and if you just need a portable computer for class or for travel, I think it works.
>>54772027
Absolute shit. I use one for work and it's the worst computer I've ever used. I would rather have bamboo shoved under my fingernails and be forced to used windows vista with 2GB of RAM while using no antivirus and getting more adware by the hour. Chromebooks are that bad. Buy anything else. A fucking iPod touch is more useful because it can at least run a few of the latest apps.
>>54780018
>apple viral marketing
>>54775053
What is this 4chan theme ?
Great for on the go. Generally pretty lightweight and good battery life. I have seabios and arch with gnome 3 on mine and it gets like 10hrs of battery life...
>>54779587
aren't they coming to chromium os? If not, you can always install remix os/android x86, there is no reason to buy chromebook only for chrome os
How safe is remote accessing a desktop from a Chromebook for work and are there any disadvantages?
Like say I need to run Solidworks so I just open my remote desktop from my Chromebook and work like that, it seems like a really good setup
>have to be in developer mode to run linux
>developer mode has a startup warning that BEING A DEVELOPER IS UNSAFE
>press enter to exit developer mode
>exiting developer mode formats the chromebook
>be me
>leave chromebook at gfs house
>anon i went on your laptop and there was this warning so i just pressed enter is that right?
>formatted my whole shit
>>54772027
>What are chromebooks like?
utter crap
>>54782611
What is seabios
>>54782685
something that didn't exist at the time
