The whole point of a Chromebook is simplicity. Except for maybe saving a couple hundred bucks (as you say)--which I'm guessing isn't really much of a good reason for most of the people doing this--it doesn't make a lot of sense. There's plenty of cheap generation or two back laptop hardware that you can reliably install Linux on and call it a day.

If I want to do software development etc. I'll use my Linux laptop. If I just need something simple for travel, I'll take a Chromebook.