Chrome OS devices have local storage. Premium ones (which are not even that expensive, in the $500+ price tier) have a 256GB SSD for local storage. This at least has not been my issue with Chrome OS.

For that price I rather pay for a proper OS, with at least a 512SSD and hardware not constrained to Web API capabilities.

Chrome OS deals decently with local file. This is the same way Chrome deals with local stuff anywhere else.

I think people underestimate what ChromeOS can do by a lot. There's the android subsytem coming with it, along with an optional linux subsystem, so all in all it covers a lot of ground.

That said, it's still limited a lot by Google not going the full length and having half baked support for a lot of things. Access to the bluetooth stack is pretty random for android apps for instance. Then Chromebooks are mostly low power machines, so the linux substack only helps that much.

Tablet mode support is too weak to take full advantage of the different form factors. ChromeOS isn't configurable enough to alternative keyboard configs, system wide shortcuts etc.

All in all, it has so much promises, only half delivered. But the half we have now is still pretty decent IMHO.

>I think people underestimate what ChromeOS can do by a lot. There's the android subsytem coming with it, along with an optional linux subsystem, so all in all it covers a lot of ground.

First impressions are everything.

ChromeOS's first impression was that it's Chrome in OS form with no local compute whatsoever; everything is done via the internet, aka the cloud.

That is not strictly the case anymore, but changing first impressions simply is not trivial.

Higher end Chromebooks also rival low- to middle-tier Windows laptops in price, and if you're paying top dollar why not buy the latter and have access to the much more capable Windows ecosystem instead?

Android and Crostini are only on some flagship devices.

And even in those, the lilliput SSD sizes make them hardly workable versus w regular laptop for the same price range.

That's not accurate, my device a Lenovo Chromebook S345 supports linux containers & android apps and is absolutely not a flagship. You'd struggle to run windows on a similarly priced laptop (cost me £150 a year ago).

It definitely is for the random devices being sold on German stores, usually with repeated discounts until finally someone takes them away.

Most of the time it is not possible to enable it.

On the SSD size, it's often the RAM that's really limiting for the linux subsystem. It's the same issue as on cheap windows laptops, only a tad better as ChromeOS is more frugal and orchestrates resources more aggressively.

Most cheap Windows devices come with 512GB.

Chrome being frugal, that is interesting. Maybe Electron devs could take some tips from ChromeOS.

> For me, one of the things that has stopped me from even trying ChromeOS is that is/meant to be 100% cloud which means no local storage

I've had a Pixelbook for 4.5 years -- a Google product, so arguably as it's "meant to be" -- and it has 128GB of local storage, and I believe you can get them with up to 512GB. Coding locally using Linux VMs/containers is actually pretty pleasant IME (albeit I don't do frontend work).