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Ask Slashdot: Most Chromebook-Like Unofficial ChromeOS Experience?
An anonymous reader writes: I am interested in Chromebooks, for the reasons that Google successfully pushes them: my carry-around laptops serve mostly as terminals, rather than CPU-heavy workhorses, and for the most part the whole reason I'm on my computer is to do something that requires a network connection anyhow. My email is Gmail, and without particularly endorsing any one element, I've moved a lot of things to online services like DropBox. (Some offline capabilities are nice, but since actual Chromebooks have been slowly gaining offline stuff, and theoretically will gain a lot more of that, soon, I no longer worry much about a machine being "useless" if the upstream connection happens to be broken or absent. It would just be useless in the same way my conventional desktop machine would be.) I have some decent but not high-end laptops (Core i3, 2GB-4GB of RAM) that I'd enjoy repurposing as Chromebooks without pedigree: they'd fall somewhat short of the high-end Pixel, but at no out-of-pocket expense for me unless I spring for some cheap SSDs, which I might.
So: how would you go about making a Chromebook-like laptop? Yes, I could just install any Linux distro, and then restrain myself from installing most apps other than a browser and a few utilities, but that's not quite the same; ChromeOS is nicely polished, and very pared down; it also seems to do well with low-memory systems (lots of the current models have just 2GB, which brings many Linux distros to a disk-swapping crawl), and starts up nicely quick.
It looks like the most "authentic" thing would be to dive into building Chromium OS (which looks like a fun hobby), but I'd like to find something more like Cr OS — only Cr OS hasn't been updated in quite a while. Perhaps some other browser-centric pared-down Linux would work as well. How would you build a system? And should I go ahead and order some low-end 16GB SSDs, which I now see from online vendors for less than $25?
So: how would you go about making a Chromebook-like laptop? Yes, I could just install any Linux distro, and then restrain myself from installing most apps other than a browser and a few utilities, but that's not quite the same; ChromeOS is nicely polished, and very pared down; it also seems to do well with low-memory systems (lots of the current models have just 2GB, which brings many Linux distros to a disk-swapping crawl), and starts up nicely quick.
It looks like the most "authentic" thing would be to dive into building Chromium OS (which looks like a fun hobby), but I'd like to find something more like Cr OS — only Cr OS hasn't been updated in quite a while. Perhaps some other browser-centric pared-down Linux would work as well. How would you build a system? And should I go ahead and order some low-end 16GB SSDs, which I now see from online vendors for less than $25?
Seriously, I wouldn't bother. It makes no sense.
The Chromebooks available are dirt cheap, good-looking, light-weight, run for 8 hours and longer and have their OS tailored to light-weight power-saving CPUs and built around the computers it runs on - sorta like Apple. Chromebooks basically are the poor mans mac-book air. And if ChromeOS fits your bill and you have no problem with your OS basically being a remote extension of the todays online service known as Google you should go right ahead and one of those available. That current one from HP looks pretty neat, for instance.
As for the dabbling, I'd go exactly the other way around: Get a ready-made buy-unpack-works Chromebook and install Crouton on it for Linux freedom pleasure. Don't be silly and try to build your own. It will be shitty, lots of work, short on battery life, weigh a ton, look like crap and be expensive in comparsion.
Mind you, I did just get two refurbished ThinkPads for Linux progging and fiddling, but those are definitely not meant for lugging around. They each weigh well over 2kg and run 4 hours on a full-charge at most and are power-hogs in compasion. Good for proggin C/C++, running LAMP at full throttle (ones got 18GB, a Quad-Core Intel iSomething in it with a 256GB SSD) or playing Fallout 3 on Wine with the GFX all maxed out. ... a server (duh) at work.
I do *not* use them for everyday utility computing though. One actually serves as
My everyday computing, mail and leisure surfing I do on a 10" Yoga 2 Android tablet. Even lighter than a Chromebook and runs 18 hours under full load. ... Have you thought about something like that? That might actually be an alternative. Although ChromeOS does seem to be a better fit for your useage.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Arch linux with openbox/Cinnamon/XFCE would do this just fine. Set a browser to start in full screen mode and you're done. If you want a little more I've been doing something similar with Arch and LXQT(this is experimental but mostly stable) and it's super snappy. Once you're set up you're ready to go and it works with whatever settings you're giving it. I'm running this with a Dell Inspiron 1525 and it's really quick comparatively and lets me run some lower specced games that wouldn't run under Windows. Downside is that if you're trying to run Gnome or KDE is going to be a bit heavy, if you're going the linux route you're going to be using something pared down. Chromium is a decent browser, but I personally think Opera has it better, especially since it's very compatible with Chrome apps and comes with some nifty features out of the box. With Arch you also get the AUR, which honestly is one of the best things about Arch aside from their amazing wiki. If you do end up doing this hit up the Arch Linux group on Facebook and I'll be happy to help you out in any way I can, if it doesn't seem like it's for you, that's cool too and I wish you the best.