[TriLUG] Chromebook specs: Was: Laptop recommendations

Sun Feb 19 13:40:04 EST 2017

Matt,

Not sure about specs but I can say my kids have been lugging around the
same Samsung chromebooks for about 4 years and I have done "nothing" in
terms of maintenance. When family asks for a recommendation the default
answer is Chromebook which allows me to visit without wasting any time
fixing their computer.

And I know Ken does live music performances on stage with Linux audio
programs running in the Chromebook Crouton VM. Whatever chromebook specs
Ken MacKenzie recommends you can bet money on it.

I know I sound like a Google advocate sometimes even. Google helped me
transition away from Windows to Linux so I am appreciative. I had to
liquidate a small business to deploy to Iraq with the NC National Guard.
Over the course of a year working 18 hour days in front of a windows
computer I was mortared about 600 times. I reenlisted in the combat zone
for a tax exempt bonus to help when I returned home to find a job, house,
car, and had to get my wife and daughter moved back to the US from her
hometown Hiroshima Japan. By the time I moved twice and settled in to a
decent job I had 3 years of itemized back taxes to file... and then I
bought a brand new computer topped off with all the best hardware and
windows vista and the office suite. I spent about $3000 with the full Geek
squad plan. The darned thing would not run more than 20 minutes without
crashing. Geeksquad could not fix it. That was it for me. Then tried Apple,
which was expensive and did not do the business things I needed.

Anyhoo, end result, Google helped me transition to Linux which alleviated
the PTSD.

And so now I am a loyal volunteer on the TriLUG Steering Committee :-)

Jeremy Davis
TriLUG PR

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 12:23 PM Matt Pusateri via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

Yeah, I’m hijacking this thread.

So I’ve thought about a chromebook, but haven’t kept up with whats out
there.   So if I wanted a decent chromebook, that could last a few years.
definitely would either want a chroot or convert it to another distro.
What kind of specs should I be looking at from those that have used them? I
see alot of them with 2Gb ram and 16GSSD and that just doesn’t seem enough.

Matt P.

> On Feb 19, 2017, at 11:05 AM, Ken MacKenzie <ken at mack-z.com> wrote:
>
> That is a lot of money for what basically a chrome book can do, which at
its core is gentoo linux.  I consider for most cases a chromebook to be one
of the best linux laptops you can buy, for any money.  If you need more
than what chromeos offers then you can put it in developer mode and use
crouton to install linux along side chromeos.  If you do plan to do that I
would recommend avoiding the ARM based chromebooks.  Still with chromebooks
(not all yet) supporting android apps as well as chromeos and the crouton
linux install option they are pretty much a very powerful platform for just
about anything you can imagine.
>
> I am on my second chromebook of 3 in this house.  I am typing to you from
it on an Acer R11.  It has android app support, and right now typing this
from within the ubuntu trusty chroot in qtile and opera.  But for testament
of power I have used chromebooks with the crouton chroot to run realtime
audio synthesis and dj mixes from stage.  Do not under estimate what can be
done with a chromebook.  And because it is already a linux based machine
all the hardware pretty much works from within the chroot.  And yes you
could run a full blown unity setup if you wish.
>
> Caveats on distro, crouton is pretty much debian or ubuntu based distro
install only.  And if you want touch screen support at present it is ubuntu
based only.
>
> Ken
>
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 10:51 AM, Matt Pusateri via TriLUG <
trilug at trilug.org <mailto:trilug at trilug.org>> wrote:
> I happen to know that Lenovo T450’s and T460’s run RHEL and Fedora pretty
well.  So I imagine that they’d run other distro’s well too.
>
> Matt P.
>
> > On Feb 19, 2017, at 10:47 AM, Thomas Delrue via TriLUG <
trilug at trilug.org <mailto:trilug at trilug.org>> wrote:
> >
> > Hey all,
> >
> > A friend of mine is looking to buy a new laptop(*) with a budget of
> > roughly 1000-1200 USD. Obviously, this device will run
> > $YOUR_FAVORITE_DISTRO Linux. It's purpose is not to do heavy computing
> > but mostly use it for what your grandma would use it for: i.e. browsing,
> > listening to music, some minor photo editing and -but this is
> > aspirational- maybe some video editing.
> >
> > What are the recommendations for laptops these days and what are some
> > common pitfalls that could prevent putting Linux on it?
> > We've looked at System76 and I think he's looked at those offered by
> > Costco but he was underwhelmed by all of them.
> >
> > (*) chromebooks are not an option
> >
> > --
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> --
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