Re:Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
by notacoward on Friday May 20, 2016 @10:41PM
(#11742938)
Yes, and it would be fantastic to use a Mac or Windows box to debug something involving Linux kernel drivers, right? There will always be special cases. Sometimes there's only one solution, and you take what you can get within those parameters. I've worked on "one of this exists in the world" kinds of hardware a few times myself. Nonetheless, the "Chromebooks are for n00bs" meme is still BS. For the majority of people who are in love with their Macbooks, a high-end Chromebook is a more than adequate alternative. The fact that it didn't suit your special needs doesn't change that.
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Re:Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
by millstone on Friday May 20, 2016 @11:00PM
(#11742987)
Developing software for something other than a Linux server is not some bizarre edge case. I was reacting to your unqualified claim that a Chromebook is "a more real development machine."
My "special needs" was running popular and well known Linux software. Many people in this thread have said that running Crouton on a Chromebook is just like having Ubuntu or Debian. But this is not so:
1. Google does not reliably update core software
2. It's harder to get help when things go wrong, because the system is sufficiently different from an ordinary Linux box
For those reasons, if you want to run Linux software, it's better to use a familiar Linux distribution, and not ChromeOS.
Re:Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
by notacoward on Monday May 23, 2016 @03:00PM
(#11756005)
If you want/need to run a very particular version of Linux software, then maybe a Chromebook's not for you. But many thousands of people successfully run all kinds of Linux software that works just fine inside the Crouton environment. I didn't and wouldn't say you're a bizarre edge case, but xbmc is being far more picky about versions than it needs to be and that's not ChromeOS's or Crouton's fault. It's unreasonable to criticize the platform because it didn't satisfy your one use case, and it certainly does nothing to refute my original point that ChromeOS isn't just for newbies.