I think the problem with Chromebook is that they are too reliant on connectivity. The disk are too small and I would like to run real desktop apps.

_net_books usually have small disks too and rely on connectivity -- hence the name.

Netbooks run the same OSes as more powerful PCs do. Sure, the concept was that they'd be good for lightweight web browsing, but that was kind of a stretch even when they were popular. The way that I used it never really relied on the net. I installed the software locally. Netbooks are just small laptops.

Chromebooks have a fair bit of offline capability in Docs, and some 3rd party apps take advantage of that as well. Still mostly useless without wifi.

I have a HP Stream 11 with Xubuntu. Works well for my needs.

Even if they run Android apps?

Obviously not. And the exceptional cases like those where the SSD can be swapped out for larger-than-stock SSD's make the point of connectivity pretty moot. And how hard is it to get connectivity nowadays?

Most CB support Android now so offline use. Ironically you are getting more offline support for things than Windows or OS X because there is more and more an Android app and for Win and OS x web use is expected.

Was flying United not long ago and the entertainment system supported on iOS and Android so you could use with a CB but not Windows or Mac laptops. Confused the heck out of the person sitting next to my son. Finally explained to him why it was working on my son's laptop.

You're right, they're probably the closest thing these days. However, I'd still prefer a proper GNU/Linux distribution for my operating system, but there are efforts to get some of them to boot and run on Chromebooks, too.

It's not that hard. For the most part things work but on at least Skylake and newer, maybe also Braswell, audio is not 100% working. I really like my HP Chromebook 13 G1 running Linux and at the moment I'm trying to get it working with FreeBSD too.