In one post they're complaining about things like Apple having the search bar in different locations in different apps, and in the next post they're seriously trying to tell us that a laptop that requires modifying the software and running shell commands copied from the internet so you can run a text editor to change settings and drivers is the solution? They dropped a note about how they haven't actually tried development on the chromebook at the end but say they assume it would be okay. For someone telling us to switch to Chromebooks, they haven't even finished doing their own homework
Linking to an SEO spam website called technical.city for performance comparisons is another clue that this choice was driven by something else first and the reasoning was backfilled. The new MediaTek part is fast, but there's more to laptop performance than a single bar chart from a site citing ancient benchmarks like PassMark.
I can't read this as anything other than an attempt to make a contrarian choice and then present it as the superior alternative.
Then within 2 sentences: "So this blog post is about my painful journey trying to find a nice piece of hardware that works and feels just as good as Apple's hardware as a web developer."
So yeah I really don't get the motivation
Plus Chromebooks have the better keyboard layout IMHO.
I have a chromebook for traveling and light web dev work since years .. and it works, because I rooted it and allmost do not have to use the UI(I need the terminal and chrome dev tools). In general it got better, but is still horrible inefficient and not ergonomic. Or did you mean it looks good? Well, maybe, but for me a elegant UI means it does not get into my workflow and can do quickly what I want. Which .. it nativly cannot.
I don't believe the claims of Lenovo hardware (esp trackpad) being as good as a MacBook's, but he thinks it is, so up to him. The keyboard layout is annoying cause control-C is both copy and kill.
There's a meta key on the keyboard, idk why they can't just do meta-c meta-v everywhere. Same in Ubuntu.
> You can technically game on some Chromebooks, but come on.
I just want the Steam edition of Dwarf Fortress, really =)
> If you were trying to do native Linux development on a Chromebook you'd be going through more obstacles.
Not really. Crostini has been supported for years, and it uses less resources than macOS containers while supporting normal filesystems instead of virtualizing it on APFS like Docker does.
According to their GitHub, this should solve the issues you mentioned with Linux development on macOS. Note: I have not used it myself as I find macOS+Brew sufficient for my tasks.
I find people who make these complaints about Linux just like Linux better. Totally fine. From my perspective, sure, some things are slightly different or need a homebrew install, but there’s plenty about Linux that’s as big or bigger pain as some of the stuff on the Mac.
That said, if Liquid Glass is the complaint and your solution is a Chromebook, wow. Just, wow.
Honestly this and Crostini both look like there are too many caveats. I'd just SSH into an Rpi for anything that won't natively run in macOS. And would not even deal with Chromebook.
P.S. I +1'd bigyabai's comment only to save it from being marked dead; why is someone downvoting that??
To be fair there is some config and tweaking required, but for a free tool it seems pretty good. Parallels has a better EXPERIENCE but I don't use VMs often; when I need raw Linux I just use one of my homelab servers.
Yes.
What do you mean by "works exactly the same?" The same as Ubuntu installed on an ARM laptop? No, there is not GUI, DE, and a lot of tools are stripped.
You can literally pull this down and get it up and running in minutes:
https://hub.docker.com/_/ubuntu/
Rosetta is not necessary to get this working either. Now, there maybe some warts with DNS that you might encounter depending on if you have a certain VPNs running, use dnsmasq, etc.. But there are potential workarounds for many issues.
If you want a full VM, I would recommend Lima/Colima. If you need a full VM with GUI and all, then maybe use something like Parallels, VMware Fusion, etc..
Last time I tried UTM specifically for reading an ext4-formatted SD card in my MacBook's internal slot, I couldn't get it to interface with the reader, but that works on Chromebooks' Linux VM supposedly.
I would say no, but then again, I would also not recommend using any type of container for that type of work either.
I use Container on macOS to build containers for things like Claude Code, Node.js, Java, etc.. You know, software I want no where near my host OS. I mount a directory in the container, if needed, and it's smooth sailing.
I do believe Container allows for one to run x86 containers with Rosetta, but I also know once you enable Rosetta, it's easier to reinstall your OS than to uninstall. I like to keep things tidy, so I will not go down this path.
> ext4-formatted SD card in my MacBook's internal slot
I would not use Container nor any other containerization tool for this task regardless of whether it is possible or not. I would be surprised if any VM client would be able to get this working too, but I've been out of the VM world for a bit.
It's also worth mentioning that come macOS 28, Rosetta will be dead and gone except for a select set of video games. That version of Rosetta will essentially be stripped down to the point of working just enough for those games and nothing more. So, I would not get too attached to the idea of running x86 binaries on macOS for too much longer.
I believe there may be some tools that can read ext4 on macOS, but UTM not reading from the host's SD Card is unsurprising. I have never used UTM, but I would imagine it would not have the capability to pass the SD reader through, but I could be entirely wrong.
I'd seriously recommend buying the cheapest burner Chromebook, x86 machine, VPS, or whatever you need if you think running x86 binaries and reading/writing to/from ext4 formatted storage will be in your future. You could maybe try an external USB SD reader, but I cannot comment if that would work either.
Container still has a few warts. Mainly, Container and mDNSResponder on macOS do not always play nicely together. If you use a VPN that binds to port 53, you will also have a bad time. Container-to-Container name resolution is also hit or miss.
However, none of these issues have prevented me from accomplishing what I need. Though, I can see where friction may arise between some corporate network environments and Container.
Possibly this bug that's been floating around for the past 6 years: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/172339479
In other perspective, ChromeOS supports running Linux apps w/ GUI without much differences. You just open your terminal, type `apt install XXX`, then `XXX` should work out-of-the box.
I don't see any reasons that ChromeOS is less open then macOS
What concrete points makes you put macos as more open ?
Other than that, it's perfect! (On the blance,still better than any other laptop)
I don't think that's entirely true. For instance, ChromeOS supports Mesa, which macOS has spent the past decade pretending doesn't exist.
The Spotify web app is still much more limited than the desktop app.
> Did you know that Adobe ported Photoshop etc to web, with all the AI bells and whistles and the web apps perform incredibly well?
Perfect if all you need out of Photoshop is the AI portion, I guess.
> As a side note, it is no surprise that Adobe's suite of creative apps [...] now work incredibly well on the web across all operating systems
They literally don't.
> Quickshare (the Airdrop alternative) ACTUALLY WORKS
Saying this like Airdrop isn't one of Apple's most bulletproof "just works" features ever
For cross-platform local sharing, I use KDE-connect.
As a Mac user I was pleasantly surprised when I switched to a arch Linux based distribution.
It's more serious on iPhones cause it's glitchy in ways that will interfere with basic usage, also yet another "we need old phones to feel slower" update.
A majority need only a browser.
My desktop and Thinkpad run Gentoo. A NAS I have at home is the build host. I am a business software consultant, and a common thread in all of my interactions is: I need to be prepared. If I'm fiddling with "hang on my mic doesn't work" or "i need to reboot", I look silly.
An onsite visit might be in an executive board room, or a closet in the back of a warehouse with a TV from 2007 and a VGA connector.
If I need software installed quick, like Zoom or something, Flatpak gets me 95% there. Yes, I could use Ubuntu or something normal, but I like portage and long for the day I can use FreeBSD seriously on the desktop.
So enter Chromebooks, which come with portage, can use Flatpak, and the OS is basically just a web browser. Plus, I don't have to wrestle with SELinux, or any of the other nitty gritty stuff that gets in the way of real work™. It's either a PWA or an Android app, and it just works.
It's not my main machine, but for $300 (2023 dollars) it's excellent for tinkering on the couch with Netflix on TV in the background.
it works fantastic magic. i had dual booted Asahi for a year or so, but really for no good reason once i realized UTM existed.
I use hypervisor.framework, never use x86 emulation, and the result is great. Tested with both Fedora for ARM and Arch for ARM (perhaps CachyOS's bundling of Arch works there, but i did it lower level because i'm an old nerd).
Well wait, UTM's official website clearly says it does support x86 if you're ok with the emu performance hit. Is that wrong?
For now, my old gaming PC runs as a Linux server hosting all my dev services and home lab projects and my MacBook is where I work with them and build apps that consume them.
It would be nice to have the server setup mirrored on a laptop I could take places with me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/mx4dni/cho...
Do you fear technology?
> Yes
Is your daddy rich?
> No
ChromeOS
Might make sense if the Chromebook can be degoogled and set up with a clean Linux distro. Barring that, a regular laptop with Linux may be an option.
The real question is if you have enough patience to power through making it work.
I did not think anyone would be interested in reading about any of this, and reading the article reinforces my hypothesis.
Wishful thinking, this has been a problem since tablets (android or ios) were a thing and trying to use one linked to your phone.
Actually Mediatek is pretty underrated. Isn't the upcoming Dimensity 9600 Pro on par with the M5 [0]? And they also designed the CPU part of the GB10 in the NVIDIA DGX Spark, which is roughly on par with the CPU of the AMD AI Max+ 395 and M3 Max 14 core [1] [2].
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1so1wyv/dimensity...
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/17762799?baseli...
[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=m3+max
are you suggesting they are a bot? a lenovo employee?
just say what you mean instead of being cryptic about it
Except "The Future" is a paid typeface inspired by Futura and designed by the Klim Type Foundry. [0] The odd lowercase "h" is an alternative glyph probably meant for display sizes. [1] In addition to this for some reason the author is using the Light weight font for body text instead of Regular weight...
[0]: I love Söhne – https://klim.co.nz/blog/soehne-design-information/
[1]: https://klim.co.nz/fonts/the-future/#open-type/ss06/example
Sure, Claude Web App is an adequate replacement to full-fledged Claude Code, and then there is also something that I didn't bother to try but maybe you can try it after you bought a new laptop. What the hell.
1) It started with Crouton (open source, "let's get access to the underlying linux system"), and worked pretty well. IIRC you had to switch to "dev mode" to get access to it.
2) Crostini and all the layer-cake isolation is wildly impressive! ...it's more VM-based with suuuper adjudicated interaction boundaries between `chromeos` and the underlying linux vm.
Arch overview: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...
Seneschal (file management/isolation): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...
Sommelier (gui passthrough/punch-through): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...
3) I've recently (intentionally) switched to their new "Baguette" beta VM/Container (you can talk to google AI mode about it, but general access docs and links are fairly sparse: "...a ChromeOS architectural shift (arriving around v142-146) that enables containerless Linux Virtual Machines, running directly via KVM instead of LXD. It removes the middle container layer for increased efficiency and flexibility, allowing for advanced features like direct PCI passthrough, while providing improved storage management compared to legacy Crostini."
4) I think over the last ~15 years I've gone from 4gb => 8gb => 16gb (just recently) and sticking with "premium-ish" dev-centric laptops (mostly: linux, git, web dev, inkscape, random hacking, etc). Currently the Acer Spin 714, previously Samsung XE930QCA... both "tablet adjacent" with full fliparound or "tent style" for watching a movie or doodling with styluses.
Bang-for-Buck, I was able to get the Spin714 for ~$300 @ 16gb ram (used-ish, off ebay) which is a STEAL, and similar story for the Samsung one. They're definitely very capable machines, and treating them as "dumb terminals with a VM I can pop open and scp files to a remote host or git push" is fantastic!
HOWEVER: beware! Google w/ Baguette is stupidly complicated on how to open a port on the device itself for other computers to be able to access servers on the local device. I argued with the google AI for like an hour trying to figure out the best way to allow `git pull my-chromebook.localdomain:./Git/some-repo` and eventually had to settle on a raw `ssh` reverse proxy pipe where I was pulling from `my-other-machine.localdomain:localhost:2222:./Git/some-repo` which was forwarded back (over SSH) to the chromebook itself.
It used to be that you could rationally: `python -m http`, open an "enable port forwarding" thingy in the terminal settings and be able to connect to the service w/o much ceremony. Nowadays they're effectively nanny-ifying the OS and it's getting much harder to do the same thing (removing visible UI for port forwarding, needing hidden settings deep links or `chrome://flags` stuff to be able to access a server/service RUNNING ON YOUR OWN MACHINE FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN NETWORK). Supposedly the cool kids are using tailscale or whatever, but it's literally `localhost<->localhost` and I don't want to have to set up a VPN or whatever to make that work, I just want to doodle on local web services in a VM on a machine that can get stolen and not end up losing all my personal/private files.
Also, ask google AI mode: "when is google phasing out chromebook and chromeos and presumably near-native linux support on their machines?" => """Court documents and executive statements reveal a plan to retire the existing ChromeOS software stack by 2034. This legacy system is expected to be replaced by a unified platform internally codenamed "Project Aluminium," which migrates ChromeOS fully onto the Android tech stack."""
...so ~8 more years of `chromeos`/`linux` and then it'll no longer be the year of linux on the desktop!
Yes, they can be very comfortable and very capable machines, but they're losing a bit of their central spirit and developer-friendliness over time.
So, what's the point of the article?
I have other keyboard issues, but I cannot confidently attribute them to Liquid Glass.