[cagenut]

I've been using my Samsung Chromebook Plus for about a year now, and the answer is a fairly clear: no.

Everything about it is just sluggish and laggy. The opposite of snappy. This is compounded by the fact that the AWS and GCP web interfaces I spend a lot of time in aren't exactly lightweight, but that's the work. The SSH client is similarly just ever so slightly off.

In terms of just compatibility pains, don't even think about trying to print from the thing. Also, the copy/paste mechanics are probably not wrong per-se but just odd enough that I'm constantly frustrated by getting it wrong. Lastly, tons of basic stuff is just a hoop to jump through now, like setting up an adblocker or using a basic text editor. I can't even imagine how hard a full IDE would drag.

Bear in mind this is the "plus" (arm) not the "pro" (x86). So maybe a Pixelbook with its full-i5 would get over the hurdle, but I guess my overall takeaway would be if your'e going to try a Chromebook make it an $800 one not a $450 one.

[jasonvorhe]

That's not a fault of Chromebooks themselves but the ARM CPU. Except for Apple, no one can pull off desktop class ARM right now.

The Pixelbook and the Chromebook Pixels before that have excellent performance for developers.

I'm sure a Chromebook Pro would have been a good choice for a workhorse as well.

[wilsonnb]

I'd wait until they release a MacBook running on ARM to declare Apples chips as desktop class.

[tbyehl]

> The SSH client is similarly just ever so slightly off.

The Google Chrome SSH app is an abomination. If you have Dev mode enabled, OpenSSH is in the shell (open the crosh cli and type 'shell'). The Termius Chrome app is also decent but they're no longer developing it.

> Everything about it is just sluggish and laggy > So maybe a Pixelbook with its full-i5 would get over the hurdle

I'm very pleased with the performance of my Acer R 13, which is fairly comparable to the CB Plus. I'm mostly using it as a 'dumb' terminal (ssh, RDP, Citrix Receiver) and not doing anything terribly taxing in the browser or Crouton. I suspect Crostini will push me towards a higher spec ChromeBook but for my current workflows it's more than sufficient.

[hedora]

I’m happy with my Acer 11” cloud book. It was under $200, is fanless, and the keyboard/ trackpad are best-in-class (usable), and so is the build quality.

Linux battery life is something like 8 hours. A year or so ago it almost ran freebsd and openbsd. Haven’t checked since.

[dustinmr]

I played with an Asus 302 flip for about a month, which convinced me to by an i5 Pixelbook last December. Both showed no signs of being sluggish or laggy while having as many tabs as I can throw at it open, xfce running in a crouton chroot, and a shell open with ssh into a remote box. That includes having a number of Google Sheets open at once, as well as two email tabs, and general browsing in addition to the Linux GUI app I run and ssh sessions.

So maybe its the processor,not the OS?

To make a comparison, my 2016 15" Touchbar Macbook Pro is a constantly, spinning beachball machine above all else. It gathers dust in the corner while these machines that are 1/5 and 1/3 the price are an actual joy to use.

I've played with the Linux install on the Pixelbook, but haven't yet taken the time to move over completely from Crouton, which works fine for me.

There's a few funky things. For example, it becomes easiest just to store all your files in the Downloads folder as that's the only folder the chroot can access. But it seems like they're ironing those things out.

I've been a happy Mac user since 2006. I'm suddenly a huge Chromebook advocate. Both of these machines are the best experience I've gotten from a new machine since I got my first Macbook Air.