I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo, and if i wanted a non-gaming expensive one i'd get a macbook pro.
I really don't see the market fit for this, I guess the android integration. But my god, I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook". Believe it or not, these things matter a lot, particularly if you're trying to target a young audience.
You're not the target audience. My parents, in-laws and the schools are the target audience.
A reasonably large chunk of the world use a computer for "googling" information and sending/receiving emails. For them, opening "the internet" means clicking the Google logo (Chrome).
This device could be perfect for them.
Chromebook users.
I loved my Pixelbook, fantastic piece of hardware. When that ended, I went with an Acer Chromebook. Works fine, just not the same.
I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
I will most likely get a Googlebook, and would be more likely to do so if it was not named Googlebook and did not have Gemini built in.
> I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
To each their own, but this is absolute insanity.
I used DOS,then Windows, then Mac for a total of almost 40 years. I think using Windows and OSX are insanity, but to each their own.
I now have a machine that boots almost instantly and just works without maintenance, upgrades, or compatibility issues. I can throw it in the river, and for $300 get a machine that will be up and running in about one minute. I can use multiple machines (small/cheap to bring on a trip, laptop for casual working, larger machine for more serious work, even at the same time. I have full access to everything from my iPhone, or access to some computer anywhere. I use remote VSCode via Crostini to do development work (terminal, vi, Codex, Claude Code) on a bunch of beelink boxes and Hetzner servers.
I cannot run installed software and I am dependent on Google for email, files, photos. For the latter, I have backups of my email and files (photos are not as easy).
Life is simpler this way.
Do you not want to be able to develop while being offline?
also - I do not like developing on my personal machine. I got into this habit a long time ago - I would always use a remote Linux box, and now with LLM's I ride them bareback (or maybe they ride me). If I trash a machine (which has not happened yet), I just rebuild it or find another box.
I am retired, and don't need to - I have a couple of beelink's (just need my home wireless running) and a couple of VPS if I really want to do things away from home, which I don't
I cannot remember the last time I wanted internet access but could not find it. Cell coverage is pretty good and reliable these days.
With AI dependence, unless you are a holdout, offline development isn't really a thing anymore. Perhaps to do some code reviews, but actually producing new code?
That is sad.
Nothing changed. You can still code the old way. All those 100x productivity gains are probably closer to 10% productivity gains after you account for all the added debugging and steering.
No reason that you can't. ChromeOS has supported Linux containers for over a decade.
You totally can, I got Linux+VSCode+Docker running on my new Chromebook in less than 15 minutes, without doing any funny stuff.
But for optimal DX it can still be preferable to VSCode tunnel into your big powerful dev box that has everything configured just right.
I feel like we are of a similar age. This is great advice. My small company is growing and i'm thinking this is the path so I don't need an IT helpdesk.
Do you still use vi or were you meaning vi(*) and actually use something else? I've been on vim for a while but happy to go back to vi
actually both. vim for "real" work, but also vi when I am moving though different machines that have minimal tooling (production or production support machines, which may not have vim installed). I have been retired for some time, so I am programming for fun, and have recently gotten into it a lot more with Codex/Claude. Before I retired I also used more visual editors with debuggers since we were on Macs in addition to vi/m. I have found that I don't need those fancy editors with the LLM's as I am just editing markup/config files and browsing code.
While I think Chromebooks are great, I would consider that if your company grows, not everyone is comfortable with vi/m, and a Mac does give you some nice options for higher end dev systems.
I'd love to read more about your setup. I'm doing about half of what you have.
It is very simple:
I have multiple Chromebooks and an extra monitor, and use Google for files, email, photos. I can grab my cheap Chromebook and throw it into my backpack, don't bother with a case. I have learned to live without using installed apps.
I have a couple of beelink boxes at home that I stash in the corner of a room, connected to my home wireless. I use Crostini to remote into these boxes to do any development. I treat these boxes the same way I treat my Chromebook - disposable. I have scripts that will reconstitute my dev environment from GitHub and my backups.
If I trash a chromebook, I grab or buy a new one. I can do pretty much anything (except dev work) from my phone if needed. If I trash a dev server, I use another one. I also have some virtual machines at Hetzner. I keep my backups there, as well as any apps I want public.
My only concern is my Google dependence. That is the trade-off for being 100% cloud based and treating my devices as disposable.
you can do the same with mac os and also have a great user experience; perhaps not the cheap replacement but doesn't feel right optimizing for replacement given that my devices last around 5 years anyway
The first party integration is the difference. You won't have your files and photos instantly there when you login and you'll still have to download and setup those apps.
[dead]
You can use Google services on a Macbook and have installed apps.
Not for $300, you don't.
I take more risks with my Chromebooks than I do with a MacBook, such as mountain-biking with it or leaning it in a car when visiting sketchy neighborhoods. Chromebooks offer a good-enough on-the-go, full-Unix experience, with an all-day battery. Sure, M-series Macs have higher performance and >20h batteries, but those nice-to-haves re well in excess of what most users need, most of the time.
I think Google is alluding to the fact that they'll continue Chromebooks but they aren't promising anything right now, or even clarifying much outside of the specific reveals.
They've won the netbook market and they'll have existing contracts and education market to always account for. With messaging that the ChromeOS experience will change and may have some things removed to refocus it I think the assumption is that it continues within it's specific use currently.
[dead]
I don't get how life is simpler.
We are way out of context window, occupied by OS chores.
Life was simpler when we were dumber, but now, no. Stop lying.
ChromeOS is a very competent, fast, and easy-to-use operating system. For my family, it's basically perfect. It's virtually unbreakable and anyone can pick it up quickly.
Windows is a hot mess and frankly I wouldn't recommend it to anyone outside of gamers. For the technically competent, there's nothing to gain on Windows, and it will just get in the way. For the those less technically inclined, Windows means complexity and viruses. Also most Windows laptops suck major ass.
MacOS is better, especially if you have an iPhone. But even MacOS is a bit too complex for the less technically inclined. If you have an android phone, then a chromebook is 100% the way to go for those people. Also, chromebooks get crazy software support these days, on par with macbooks.
> ChromeOS is a very competent, fast, and easy-to-use operating system.
It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company that loves harvesting your data to help find new ways to sell you things.
I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes. Most people just want get stuff done in a competent, fast and easy-to-use operating system.
>It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company
this is pretty much any company these days. microsoft is guilty of the same.
Users absolutely care, what a terrible comment. Users have ZERO choice. Tech companies are not regulated, tech companies abuse their monopolies at their users detriment, and tech companies do not have consumer councils to help mitigate these issues.
What it actually appears to be is we have a market where undemocratic business leaders are deciding the direction of technology in a country that only seems to benefit them and not the population.
What a terrible mindset to have and I sincerely hope you never have any capacity to yield power in your life.
They do have a choice, they just don’t want to a) pay for anything or b) be cut off online society
Man you clearly need to talk to people outside of Google. I'm glad the vast majority of Americans hate tech companies and their leaders if this is the mindshare they purport: "you don't have a choice, fuck you."
Great attitude that goes well with voters.
How did I not describe a choice? If you don’t want to be tracked and manipulated, don’t drink the free beer. Turn off JavaScript. Pay for a search engine. Run your own mail server. Host your own fediverse node. Accept that life will be harder. Don’t be so naive as to think for profit companies aren’t going to milk everything they can from addicts who can’t quit their “free” services. Go start a co-op or something if you want to change it, but you can’t compete. And the reason is because they offer it for free and hide what you’re really trading for it in the EULA.
If you think I’m not mad about it, you’re not reading between the lines. I’m just a realist. This is what Peter Thiel meant by “free email was not enough”.
Until your google account gets locked for some unknown reason and you there is 0 support and recourse. And now you can't even log into your own computer.
The is so rare. Such things can happen even with bank accounts (if you are a foreigner in many countries).
If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.
>If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.
This can be fixed yourself, whether that's hopping into a TTY or having to boot a live environment and chroot in. You aren't at the mercy of some major company's support people.
Even without fixing it you should be able to get at the files on the drive for use on another machine, or backing them up if you're gonna reinstall.
Keep boot live environment? You always carry USB? Learn security. Chroot?
You don't learn or understand modern bootc?
So is Apple. Went to the Apple store recently. To buy something they told me scan a QR code. The code popped up
"Get Start and Personalize Your Apple Store Visit" and a big button "Share Now"
Under the button in small text was a link to "customize" which said they were going to harvest your contact info, your carrier account, your phone model and applecare info, the list of all devices you own, the list of all your subscriptions, your purchase history, your reservation history.
They said all of it was for ads (to make more customized recommendations)
So much for "Apple = Privacy"
> I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.
And when it's brought up where people do know, there's always these attempts at gatekeeping by speaking for the average user like a priest would speak for God.
The person who asked that cares, and didn't ask "the average, realistic user", because you can't ask an abstract concept questions.
They don’t care because they don’t understand, or don’t want to. It’s a scary thing to confront the fact that you are psychologically and demographically profiled so that people can manipulate you to extract as much of your money and attention as possible.
>But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.
Like them I think I am also surprised not because that isn't the case, but because it's wild to see that take on HN, which skews way more towards privacy/owning your compute.
I've been working in the privacy space for ~4 years now and have worked across, homomorphic encryption, Federated Learning and finetuning.
I've also run multiple user studies on privacy during my time doing a master's in privacy at CMU. almost 10/10 times users will choose, easy to use and accessible over complex and more control over their data.
In fact, for one of the Mag7 we proved that, users only want to have the feeling of safety and don't really care what gets done with the data.
very unfortunate, but this is the world we live in.
So does Windows. macOS locks you into a company that hoovers up your data but pinky promises not to sell it and will fight tooth and nail to have prevent others from doing the exact same thing on their operating system.
If you care about privacy, Linux and BSDs are the only options, but actually good out-of-the-box Linux laptops are few and far between.
Except for Chromebooks, of course.
Big difference is that you can use macOS without a user account. Can't do that with Windows without some hidden terminal magic.
MacOS doesn't have to force it, users will gladly sign into their iCloud account. Virtually nobody uses the Windows Store, but the Mac App Store is a necessity given how restricted 3rd party apps are on macOS now.
Since when is the Mac App Store a necessity? It's still possible to download DMGs straight from the internet and install the .app by dragging it to /Applications
The only restriction to 3rd party apps are unsigned apps. Very rare these days, mainly small hobby projects. You can still activate them through the System Settings.
Unsigned apps are a pain, but you can have your app signed without being in the macOS App Store. Nearly all my apps are signed and non-App Store. e.g. Homebrew requires Casks be signed, so anything you can install via Homebrew is a single line to install without additional restrictions.
Though if you want to get rid of the persistent nag on your Dock to log in to your Apple account, that's a significantly higher level of magic than what it takes to use Windows without an MS account.
(I just installed Windows a week ago without an MS account, and it was a 30 second step during setup to skip an MS account. The steps to get rid of the macOS nag are daunting enough that I just live with it permanently.)
That’s no better than Windows (without a lot of effort and a constant game of cat and mouse only achievable by technical users). At least Google’s cloud services tend to actually be good, if you made peace with the tracking and privacy concerns.
Apparently you can create a local account on a chrome device [1], although I can't vouch for the process; otherwise cloud auth is tied to Google, yes. You could use a guest account for everything, if your really want; but then you lose out on persistence.
But as long as you accept that everything you do is in a browser; which is reality for the vast majority of computer users, there's no real lock-in. You can just as easily use the browser version of Microsoft Office as the browser version of Google Docs.
You're certainly locked into Google for the browser and for updates, unless you do a lot of work. But it's been a while since it was common to get commercial OS updates from a 3rd party.
[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/how-use-chromebook-without-go...
Yes, this is true, and I myself am degoogled. Mostly, except YouTube, but I am off Gmail and stuff these days.
But, we need to pick our battles. For most people the reality is they have a Google account anyway, and they will log into and sync on any device. So, it makes no difference.
Does it matter?
Your friend using Android or iOS may have typed your exact address, phone, signal id, gps, etc on her Google/apple account. And now?
If you fly to use you are giving more info.
Are you running your own bank? Pepper are you? What happens when you join job (tons of papers?)
wild that we're talking about which OS locks you up more w.r.t an apple product.
Counterpoint. I use Windows and MacOS daily and they are both awful (and occasionally wonderful) for different reasons. Windows on a laptop sucks simply because I can't close the lid and put it in my bag without it catching fire, but apart from that I don't care too much either way.
I use Linux CLI all the time but every time I've tried to use a Linux desktop as a daily driver, it's stopped working one day for reasons that are beyond my ability to care enough to figure out.
I used to think so too, but when my extremely-non-techy mother's Chromebook died, she was able to switch from chrome OS to Ubuntu with minimal fuss. Chrome OS has some specific features, but if you just need a web browser Ubuntu works fine.
You say this only because she hasn’t been ransomwared yet, which is impossible on ChromeOS.
It's also very rare on Linux. On Linux, 99% of software comes from trusted repositories. The odds of randomware existing in the Ubuntu repos is low.
It's not the wild wild West like Windows. There are structural reasons why Linux desktops are less susceptible to malware, as well as the obvious marketshare issue.
I support a lot of old folk on laptops that are less technically inclined. All they want is Windows because familiarity, despite Microsoft making things unfamiliar every release.
MacOS is too complex? What web site even is this?
Please refrain from making claims like "absolute insanity" without backing it with some sort of commentary on the claim. It really isn't worthy of HN.
see guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's the only OS for my 93 year old mother. I can manage it remotely, too, and she can't mess it up.
My mother (80+) runs Fedora, and I believe she is incapable of messing it up, even if she did have the root password. Doubleclicking random exe files off the internet is almost uniquely a Windows problem. I dunno about Macs - its users are usually technically illiterate, but Apple has done a pretty good job of locking users out of their own machines.
> Doubleclicking random exe files off the internet is almost uniquely a Windows problem.
Tell that to my partner's grandfather, who managed to find and install malware chrome extensions on his chromebox.
Gosh I can’t believe how lucky I am. I’m not technically illiterate and I haven’t been locked out of my machine.
I work for organizations that spend thousands per year on MDM to turn macOS running on Macbook Airs into effectively ChromeOS.
For certain use cases, a computer that can do nothing whatsoever except run the absolute latest version of production Chrome is better than any other device.
A computer filled with great hardware that gets its hands held behind its back by shit software sounds like the soup de jeure for apple.
The HP Dragonfly Chromebook is pretty good. The Asus models are also very nice. The Acers are hit or miss; quality is iffy on those and there's a zillion models so it's impossible to find a specific one.
I wish Framework would keep supporting ChromeOS but alas. You could put ChromeOS Flex on one - it doesn't have Android apps, which is fine for me, and it does support the Linux environment, which is excellent.
Why would you want ChromeOS and not Linux?
With ChromeOS you get both.
I have used Linux for 20 years, but only for development, and I will only develop on Linux.
For everything else (email, files, photos), I want a browser. Used to be Mac/Osx, but got tired of being managed by it.
Just my preference. You can do everything on Linux, just never felt comfortable with it.
You want a browser for files?
b/c you don't have to think about the operating system and updates. I posted about my experience here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051902
...basically, I have "nerd cred" and run linux on my desktop, but for my laptop I wanted: disposable (no leaky hard drive), zero maintenance (no kernel modules for sound drivers), battery-portable.
90% of the time I'm wanting `vim` + `git` + `ssh`, and 20% of the time i'm wanting to run some random stuff locally. Chromebook is basically zero friction and 1/10th the price (and 1/10th the capabilities) of a "very nice mac laptop", plus you can pop into a very capable linux VM (w/ passthrough GUI support) without a lot of ceremony.
Windows laptops are out of the question, and pure linux laptops (until only very recently) were of marginal support and low battery capabilities (especially "close it and stuff it in a backpack for 3 days").
> (no kernel modules for sound drivers)
What century did you write this in?
https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/3961
"""last week: Pop!_OS 22.04: kernel 6.17.9-76061709 — module BTF validation cascade boots system to emergency mode #3961
Thanks for taking a look,
Quick update — I'd already recovered before seeing this comment. The path that worked: boot Pop_OS-oldkern, run sudo apt install --reinstall linux-image-6.17.9-76061709-generic linux-modules-6.17.9-76061709-generic && sudo kernelstub, reboot. 6.17.9 came up clean. The reinstall's postinst hooks ran update-initramfs automatically; /boot/initrd.img-6.17.{4,9}-* are both freshly dated 2026-05-06 (~11:44 / 11:46), and kernelstub copied them to the EFI partition. Verified: journalctl -k -b 0 | grep -iE 'btf|failed to validate' | wc -l → 0. """
In the year 2026, on my Linux laptop (T14, Linux 6.18.26) I ran the following:
And it responded: 53. Fifty three kernel modules are dedicated to sound. I, of course, never had to install any of them by hand, or take any other direct care.Those modules are all in tree. The distro chose to build them as modules. You could have built them into the kernel. I don't think that counts. When I hear about manually futzing with "kernel modules for sound card" I think you're running out of tree modules in 1997.
> Windows laptops are out of the question, and pure linux laptops (until only very recently) were of marginal support and low battery capabilities (especially "close it and stuff it in a backpack for 3 days").
Dell has sold laptops with first-party Linux support for nearly fifteen years, to say nothing of other smaller OEMS.
As for the battery issues during sleep: that actually has to do with a combination of the BIOS settings + downstream ramifications of secure boot (and how the old-fashioned "hibernate" used to work). Unfortunately, that isn't specific to Linux. My MBP has the same problem, and so do the same laptops running Windows.
ChromeOS is linux. It's a Linux distro that works correctly out of the box, setting it apart quite strongly from all other Linux distros.
Then why do people install Linux in Chrome books?
Chromebooks make a pretty nice, Linux friendly machine. They're usually cost optimized given the market they address, but that's fine if it fits your needs. Sometimes they have "weird" hardware, keyboard/mouse controllers and stuff at least wasn't always "pc standard", audio controllers seem to be commonly outside mainstream as well.
It's nice to run Linux on a machine that was built to run Linux. No silly windows key, no fighting with firmware that was built for windows first. I have a Chromebox that was a great mini desktop and the pricing was nice. My first Chromebook ran FreeBSD pretty well once it was no longer needed for ChromeOS, etc.
You have to shop carefully, you want something that's easy to put a MrChromebox firmware on and doesn't have any known issues with the OS you want to run. It's been a while since I purchased a ChromeOS device and the current state is different than it was then; I'm not sure how easy it is to find reasonable options now, but there were plenty of good options in the past. You also want to be sure that it has enough ram and storage for you needs or that those are expandable, but I think soldering ram and storage is pretty common across the range.
Crostini is kind of a joke, but I use it to remote into real Linux boxes. For me, best of both worlds.
The number of people who have "installed linux" other than ChromeOS on a Chromebook is probably in the low single digits, while the ChromeOS installed user base is in the hundreds of millions. For any given thing someone is going to try to put linux on that thing, but it is not a common use case for Chromebooks that we need to discuss.
I was genuinely asking. In “my circles” a Chromebook is a cheap laptop that one can install Linux on. As in, “oh, I just picked up this used Lenovo Chromebook and installed Ubuntu on it”.
You'll get a more informative answer from them. I couldn't speak to their motivations. But I certainly wouldn't advise doing it. ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu, and it automatically updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.
It feels like the wrong tool for the job in both directions. If you wanted a host platform for Ubuntu you'd choose something else, and if you wanted platform software for a Chromebook ChromeOS is the right choice.
In the real world, Chromebooks are excellent candidates to install Linux. They are highly compatible, low power, excellent size/weight, and run great. You don't sound like a person who has any real world experience with this topic despite the authoritative tone in your responses.
Battery management tends to be best-in-class on Chromebooks, it's far from certain that you'll get anything nearly as good after installing 3rd party Linux on it. That's my #1 reason for not even considering it (despite having installed Linux on many different Chromebooks years ago when they were new and ChromeOS was still literally just a browser).
My <$200 ARM Chromebook got around 12-14 hours battery life new (though as with my M1 Macbook has degraded to probably 70% capacity after 2-3 years). It draws essentially no power in standby (ChromeOS will enter an ultra low-power hibernate-like state seamlessly after a while). I've opened it up a month after last using it and it turns on in <10 seconds having lost a couple percent.
Updates are seamless and add like 5 seconds to boot time when they apply during a restart (thanks to ChromeOS A/B update model there's no loading spinner or anything, you reboot and it's done. Update countdown extortion a la Windows isn't a thing either, you can stay on an non-updated Chromebook for months without a reboot and the most you'll see is the same passive "Click Restart to Update" button in the notification area.
I use the built-in Linux VM all the time, it runs GUI apps like VS Code without any issues, and my ARM Chromebook runs all sorts of regular Arm64 Debian builds for GUI or terminal out of the box. I turned off the Play Store for Android Support, in the past when Linux support was weaker and web APIs in general weren't as capable I needed it for some specific apps but don't really have a need at this point.
The security model on ChromeOS means that untrusted scripts/installers running in the Linux VM are completely isolated from anything on the browser so you (or your proverbial Grandma) don't have to worry about credential stealers/ransomware/malware. You can copy files between the ChromeOS filesystem and the LinuxVM filesystem but a process running in Linux can't cross that boundary and are confined to the sandbox.
Plus, very much unlike my Macbook, I can actually install an app from Github or compile myself without 7 clicks and three different dialogs each time (as is the case with Apple's aggravating security hassleware on MacOS Sequoia). Proving you can have a heavily locked down, secure model without actively making the user experience as miserable as possible (to "encourage" use of the built-in app store).
It's easily the least intrusive OS experience of all the major OSes, and completely gets out of the way without drawing attention to itself. And sure, Google is an advertising company, I get it, but my Macbook advertises iCloud products and Apple TV shows to me more than anything on my Chromebook.
With the 10 year Chromebook support policy, I've got a crazy amount of life out of all of my Chromebooks. It really is liberating having an OS that de-emphasizes its own existence in a world where I have to fight ever changing MacOS deprecation and security restrictions and Windows bloatware being thrown over the fence in every other update.
Just use Chromebook via Crostini to remote access a headless Linux box. For me, the Chromebook is the right tool in both directions.
> ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu [...]
I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance. Doubly so if Crostini is put into the mix.
> [...] updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.
Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already? What kind of updates do you think are not done by Ubuntu or another Linux distro?
Last I tried ChromeOS was on the Pixel Slate way back when. A buggy, unstable, clearly not properly tested, unperformed mess that I would not wish upon my enemies. Glad to see it has improved to usable now, but that it is better than any other Linux distros, I can't say how considering even being on par with e.g. Fedora would have been a miracle not to long ago.
Happy to admit that purely on the UI/UX, ChromeOS is very solid in my opinion, arguably and subjectively the most consistent and user friendly designed desktop environment I know. Far more consistent than anything MSFT or Apple have provided in quite some time, everything looks like it should, placement is easy to grasp and reliable with a clear identity. Consistency wise, only Gnome can hold a candle to the strictness with which the ChromeOS team execute their vision, though there is the clear divergence in the Gnome team pushing new UX innovations and concepts even if they are controversial and may need to time to learn, whilst the ChromeOS team seems purely focused on the most clearly easy to master approach one can take.
Have you tried configuring secure boot - with - every single protection on Ubuntu /any distro?
Just google: Mathew Garrett On The State Of Boot Security implement everything and comeback.
Maybe slate with android? If you disable android in ChromeOS it a dream to use. Everything just works.
And remember normal people (i.e outside USA) already have Android phone. They just login and use. All passkeys etc. synced and running. All these are a pain in fedora etc.
> I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance
Multiple reasons. ChromeOS ships an optimized, platform-specific kernel, built using LLVM with LTO and AutoFDO. No other distro even attempts this. The only one that has even considered it is CachyOS that offers optional LTO, or Gentoo, where you can DIY LTO, but neither supports FDO.
Another reason is that Chrome GPU acceleration actually works on ChromeOS. IPU webcams work, too. On Fedora, Arch, and others you'll be patching and rebuilding kernels to get IPU.
> Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already?
This is another aspect where the ecosystem is the advantage, not the technical details. Chromebook makers are required to furnish firmware updates. ChromeOS will update (silently, without user intervention or notice) everything in a Chromebook: SSD controllers, battery management, radios, touchpad, USB PD controllers, the Titan security chip, the CPU, whatever. This is very different from the situation on random Linux+hardware combinations where the only source for many of these updates, if they are available at all, would be to reboot to Windows.
> ChromeOS ships an optimized, platform-specific kernel, built using LLVM with LTO and AutoFDO.
Ok. How significant is the difference they gain from that? If this yields such major gains, there must be benchmarks showcasing it. At the same time, there must be reasons why something isn't widely adopted if it can provided tangible upsides. Would be very surprised if Clear Linux (rip) and similar in spirit distros didn't go far beyond those optimisations, if they can yield measurable benefits. Even then though, there are measurable performance tradeoffs for anything running via Crostini which I know for a fact any compile time optimisations won't make up.
> [...] where the ecosystem is the advantage, not the technical details. [...] SSD controllers, battery management, radios, touchpad, USB PD controllers, the Titan security chip, the CPU, whatever.
I just checked and I think you are confused. ChromeOS uses fwupd [0] for those things, literally the same toolset and even sources (LVFS) to e.g. Ubuntu [1]. There is no difference in ecosystem, there is no advantage for ChromeOS here. I have to also point out that these are not "silently, without user intervention or notice", Google says so themselves [2] (except for UEFI/firmware but that was the only one you excluded in that list). Fortunately too, you wouldn't want ChromeOS (or any OS really) to do such major changes silently for many good reasons.
The "technical details" are important here. They are the same, they are not automatic, they can't be superior one way or the other. It is really neat that these solutions are so robust and reliable users of ChromeOS can start to think they must be some special secret sauce, when in fact they are just FOSS solutions we have had for a while. Heck, even the verification/testing isn't unique to ChromeOS.
> [...] random Linux+hardware combinations where the only source for many of these updates, if they are available at all, would be to reboot to Windows.
This does both Chrome OS and the FOSS projects it is built around a disservice and is not true. And not just because I can tell more than one instance where using Windows on a newly released laptop during the early Renoir days yielded driver issues which were unresolvable because Windows Update found it necessary to force a faulty AMD driver onto my system every time I provided a network connection, even after I manually tried to suppress that specific update and had already installed the proper driver, all while Renoir support in the then current Linux kernel was flawless out of the box along with Wifi, touch screen, etc.
It is great if everything feels polished and I feel the UX is great on ChromeOS, which may lead someone to think it is better than alternatives even where it can't be. But in regard to updates, how could they be, they are literally using the same solution with the ChromeOS team being happy to give credit and admit such.
[0] https://developers.google.com/chromeos/peripherals/fwupd-gui...
[1] https://documentation.ubuntu.com/project/SRU/reference/excep...
[2] https://developers.google.com/chromeos/peripherals/fwupd-gui...
> when in fact they are just FOSS solutions we have had for a while. Heck, even the verification/testing isn't unique to ChromeOS.
You answered it yourself (last paragraph). The main point is everything is in FOSS but not packaged like chromeos.
I strongly want bluefin/silverblue/bazzite etc to succeed but even installation is PITA. UI is not really that polished. Whether or not great one like proper integration (a.k.a like Apple) like passkey in Google Chrome/Android etc.
- Installer of bluefin etc takes super long - issue with btrfs - no idea. Dev says upstream issue - not us. - flatpak is still pain for normies - we wanted to deploy it to a large compter pool - ecosystem is controlled by Google. So fewer failures with hardware.
- And polish (like you say). Why can't <distro> make it so that uefi etc is hidden?
- Normies expect sleep to work. This is still not perfect with distro (not their fault).
Many including me - want OS to be like an appliance. Just works.
FWIW I'm one of those people. I have an old rotting pixelbook that I installed Linux on back-in-the-day thanks to Mr. Chromebox. It was a huge improvement over chromeos but I'd never buy a chromebook to install Linux on it again because there was too many small annoyances like needing to fix the keymap every time I did a clean install (the caps lock key was bound to super and I vaguely recall some craziness around the higher function keys), and sound didn't work.
"Works" is kind of generous. Try connecting a printer for example.
Having very recently (and unsuccessfully) tried to connect a printer to "real" Linux, that's not really a relevant point against ChromeOS.
In the end, after hours of frustration, my solution was to print the document from my (amusingly, Google Pixel Android) phone.
This is actually the perfect detail to discuss. ChromeOS printing is literally just CUPS, so it has the same functionality as any other Linux distro. If you have a modern IPP printer on a normal home Wi-Fi, you can expect it to just work. This covers most people's needs.
Where ChromeOS shines is that it has never been affected by severe and numerous CUPS security vulnerabilities like CVEs 2024-47175 through 2024-47177, which were unauthenticated remote vulnerabilities, while Ubuntu and Fedora (and all other major distros) were affected. Why? ChromeOS sandboxes the hell out of these kinds of subsystems. CUPS runs in a PID namespace, network namespace, mount namespace, on a read-only filesystem, with seccomp filters. It cannot use the network, ever. It can only communicate over a pipe with a network proxy. The proxy is only active if and when a user tries to print. The proxy is also in a seccomp jail that prevents it from doing anything except enumerated network traffic and the pipe. The proxy is written in a safer language than CUPS itself, and protects CUPS from malformed, malicious inputs by validating both PPDs and print requests.
That sounds like some nice engineering.
You can install ChromeOS on a Mac: https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/
It's a great stopgap OS for older hardware.
> I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
Similarly, but I would extend that to mac mini/studio, but I would like Linux on it. I like hardware, but I hate the OS there.
As a linux desktop user, I would buy it only if I can wipe ChromeOS out of it.
> I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
Is this satire?
We tried Chromebooks for our kids, and the instant I could buy Neos I did. It might just be that we're fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, but I had a hell of a time trying to get stuff like parental controls figured out on ChromeOS.
You don't need parental controls at all. Google will make sure they see exactly what they need to see...
/s
I think it's a successor to the Chromebook. In the vast majority of modern K-12 public schools, the school district owns the hardware, not the students.
Everything on this page suggests it's not for education.
Emphasis on AI and connecting to your phone. How many Iceland trips do students make?
Well Chromebooks are primarily EDU products yet still marketed and sold direct to consumers.
Presumably school districts are just going to see different marketing.
Now that I look closer at the Googlebook, I think you are right.
The target is definitely not the K12 education market. It looks more like a premium device which most Chromebooks are not.
On second thought, I think it's not for K12 after all.
I recently heard from couple of Technology Directors at schools that they are looking to procure Macbook Neos replacing their Chromebooks. This might be a strategy to defend their Chromebook market in schools.
Why would an organization want to move from a centrally managed fleet to an unmanaged fleet?
You can still centrally manage Macs? Look at every tech company.
Yeah, but can schools do what even tech companies struggle with/cobble together here?
Macs are very popular in schools today for teachers and staff. Switching to Macbook Neos for students would actually simplify their support burden. I'm not sure they'd be cost justified though.
Source: My wife works IT for our school district.
Reddit r/k12sysadmin disagrees. Sure, as always there will some that will switch to Apple. Why not. Some even have MS.
https://www.apple.com/education/k12/deploy-and-manage/
What do you think schools do currently?
Pretty sure when they talked about "very high build quality" and such they're saying this is not a replacement to the cheap chromebooks (which I think the macbook neo is eating anyway) but a higher price point.
Yes, you are probably right.
I don't think these are Chromebook successors. This is supposed to be a premium line according to the "Android Show" video. But I suspect future Chromebooks will use this OS eventually.
Unless they're cheap, it's not going to sell well for K-12.
I used to work for an ed-tech company that was specifically focused on software for chromebooks and in talking with customers the biggest selling point of chromebooks for schools what their price. The school issued devices get absolutely beat to shit and they just expect a certain number to be decommissioned at the end of the year. Most schools are looking to buy the cheapest thing that does the job and the small group that have the money to actually buy premium devices are going to gravitate toward Apple products.
If Google is selling these for less then $500 then maybe there's a place for them, but like we saw it with the Pixelbook, there just isn't really demand for an $1000 chromebook
Is the value of the Chromebook in education that it is 1) cheap or 2) doesn't do anything except have a browser?
If it is both, then all the Neo needs to do is have a browser only mode and goodbye Chromebook market.
A Chromebook is far cheaper than a neo. It could be less then a third the price, and that makes a big difference when you're buying a thousand of them.
Gembook or Geminote would've been cooler. But no one asked me unfortunately.
Google MegaPixel!
Googlebook Pixel? Or PixelBook running GooglebookOS?
GooBook? Sounds obvious to me. Or just Bookgle. Lap Goog. aiPad. OogleNote. Infinite possibilities.
I'm a happy Apple ecosystem user. However, there are many more Windows and Android users worldwide.
I think that the appeal of this product is that the Wintel monopoly of years ago is dying. If the Googlebook is well executed (as the Apple M1 line was), it can be an option for Android users who wish to move away from Windows but are not knowledgeable enough to use Linux. I think the only problem here is Google's track record of abandoning product ideas. A new product like this requires multiple iterations to get it right, but if Google abandons it as soon as the results are not what was expected, it will not have the time to mature in areas like gaming or app support.
Does this thing run Android? There don't seem to be any details in this post.
Yes. https://aluminium-os.com/
FYI: aluminium-os.com is an independent information platform. We are not officially connected with Google, Alphabet Inc., or any related organisations.
You might be surprised how good cloud gaming has gotten. I play AAA games at max settings on my MacBook Pro through GeForce Now, and with fiber internet it's nearly indistinguishable from native.
The problem with cloud gaming is that there's too many ways for it to go wrong and only one way for it to go right.
It's hard to explain to normal people that if you have a stable internet connection and live relatively near to a data center and you buy a dongle and a cat6 cable to avoid any Wi-Fi interference and you enjoy playing certain genres of games but not other genres of games, then you can get a good gaming experience.
You have to be a technical person to understand the failure modes and most people aren't technical, get frustrated, and just say that it sucks. Cloud gaming is not a mass market product.
I know people in general hated it, but I found Stadia to be quite good. I'm not too upset because Google paid me back full purchase price, but it's almost a shame that they managed to mess up cloud gaming that badly.
I don't know, I saw quite a few positive comments on Stadia, both as a service and the general approach. Most of the negativity was about it being a Google product and not wanting to get invested in a platform they would inevitably kill. Then of course there was the reaction when it was inevitably killed.
It seems pretty inconsistent. I tried GeForce Now on my gigabit internet and it was super laggy with a lot of audio glitching. Maybe I just didn't have a datacenter near by.
You have my attention. I assume this would also work well on a worse laptop (since the processing is done in the cloud)?
Yes, it's just streaming a video to you. The main limit is your connection speed if you're not near a datacenter as you're limited by ping, so controls can be laggy. You can try it out for free though, which will give you an idea of how good your link is.
I use boosteroid, which is just steam on cloud. ~4k @ 120Hz for $12/month. No HDR though (they recently removed it). Such a stupid good deal compared to the price of a gaming PC, that I can't really complain. So many data centers with GPU sitting around...
Not just sitting around, available for rent at hourly rates that will add up to a lot more than $12/month if you actually use them! I'm surprised they can offer this service at $12/month with presumably unlimited usage.
The main problem now is publishers have to opt their games in to be playable. Until that's solved cloud gaming is a non-starter for me given my current library.
Googlebook is cringe? It's just the name of the company, calm down.
They used to have something called the pixelbook, which is the most generic name you can possible have. Neither of these names are unarguably better than the other.
If this ends up being great for developing android apps, and running them on the desktop, plus having 15+ hour battery life, it could be interesting. Knowing google, it probably won't though.
At this point, if you want a laptop, get a mac and be done with it.
Until other manufacturer step up their game, there will be years and years.
Apple was given a free run by Intel's fab issues. I'm hoping Panther Lake laptops together with Dell's CAMM2 will make Linux on amd64 highly competitive with Linux on the M-series, so maybe months and months - not years and years.
I thought Microsoft had the market cornered on terrible product naming but "Googlebook" is extremely awful.
My suggestion, if they really want to go this route, is to shorten it to "gBook".
I am old enough to remember that iPad was supposed to be a product-line-dooming bad name.
Everyone was expecting "iSlate", which would have been far better according to popular opinion at the time.
I was expecting the Apple Palette
And just a few years before then... Wii.
The first thing that came to mind is "What about all that gobbledygook in your Google-dee-book?"
I'm imagining poultry running around clucking: "gBook! gBook! gBAWK!"
> I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo
8GB of RAM for MacOS is a concern. ChromeOS is probably more RAM efficient..
> ChromeOS is probably more RAM efficient
Based on? Chrome tabs taking up gigs of RAM would make me think ChromeOS isn't going to be very light on memory.
You can control chrome tabs, e.g. autosuspend, close them, etc, you can't control MacOS RAM footprint.
>but my god, I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook"
i'd hate for my computing choice to lack fashion forward qualities -- I wouldn't want to be embarrassed at Gate A-13 with my new Apple perched on my lap proudly while waiting for the next question from my adoring fans.
I hope they appreciate the new color!
real talk : my favorite excuse for using an Apple product throughout my life is the tried and true "my company stuck me with it and I hate this piece of shit.", so I find it kinda fascinating that they're such cult objects -- and to be fair I am sure i'd say exactly the same thing if I was ever stuck in a company stupid enough to try to make me be productive on a fancy chromebook, too.
Why anyone would view a non-upgradeable phone slapped into a laptop case with minimal computing capability for the price would ever consider a Neo is beyond me. At that point, get a damn tablet. It’s literally the same thing but, like, designed with intent rather than a bunch of scrap pieces.
Seriously, what’s the draw? The 8 gigs of ram? The 200 gigs of storage? The major lack of ports?
Have you ever touched a Neo? It does not feel like scrap pieces. That is the magic.
A phone has great battery life and standby power management. What’s the problem with running a different OS on it if it works just fine?
Different stuff for different folks I guess. At work all files are on the cloud, I have a NAS and a computer I can remote into for development. A Neo is just perfect to make all of that mobile.
As for tablets, I’d only recommend one if you need a stylus for drawing or a smaller form factor. I think that is the market where the Neo is competing, that is where you have a point.
In local prices, a MacBook Neo is $800 for a 13" display, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage.
A 13" iPad Air with 8GB RAM, 256GB storage and a Magic Keyboard is $1648.
The iPad has a notably more capable CPU, for over double the price.
An Android tablet isn't a capable replacement for a MacBook/iPad. (And I don't know that you can get even get any 13" Android tablet with a reasonable keyboard case for a discount over a MacBook Neo.)
You get 90% of the MacBook experience for half the price. Most users only need this 90%.
Got a cheap Acer Win11 machine for like $500 last year. I don’t think they even know what the low-end market is like, it is all about getting the most RAM/storage while everything else is reasonable and cheap enough. In which it is really hard to make a profit there because the price is the most important thing
MacBook neo is not expensive but it's not cheap.
Just the build quality on MacBooks compared to your random PC laptop piece of plastic that falls apart within a few years would make me very picky. I have a random “corporate” Lenovo and everything physical in it is way way worse than in my work MacBook
It's $600. In this market that's practically free.
Which machines on the market beats it at the price?
Google Pixelbook from years ago was $999 IIRC. I wouldn't be surprised if Googlebook is more expensive than Neo.
I wanted to like the Pixelbook, but it had a lot of limitations, ChromeOS being the major one. I recall that people were able to run Linux on them, but no idea what that experience was like.
Crossover has allowed me to 100% Spider-Man Remastered on a base M5 MacBook Pro. Gaming is not out of reach.
There's an entire world outside of Silicon Valley and the Apple ecosystem. Apple has a ~9% PC market share. Who is buying the other 91% if there is no demand?
I can tell you they're not going to be buying "googlebooks" plus, Apple has never until this year offered an actual low-price machine.
Of course their market size is going to be smaller when you're leaving out the sub $1000 dollar market.
supposedly macbook pro's M-series are quite adept for gamers these days.
They’re surprisingly powerful for all three games that are available on the platform.
Jokes aside, there are some games with competent Mac ports and if you only have an M-series Mac, you can find some titles that play nice. But most of the stuff that you’d play on a PlayStation or on Windows is simply not available.
But the gaming software market is very heavily biased towards delivering for Windows on Intel. That said, I’m not a gamer so what do I know?
Linux gaming is getting a definite boost from Windows 11 being a shitshow.
And pracically _nobody_ does native Linux games, they're all just running Windows games through Proton, and faster. So fast actually that Proton is Microsoft's performance target :D
I encounter a few native Linux games from time to time on Steam, mostly indies and other smaller games. There was a time there was a medium-sized push for this, Steam was pushing it, lots of Humble and GOG stuff came out with Linux versions...
But yeah, Proton is so good now that I don't think there's much impetus to port. Test on Deck/Steam Machine/Proton, sure, but not so much port. Steam Play also handles runtime container stuff for native Linux games so that can be pretty good and stable itself, but I've definitely had situations where switching over to the Windows version via Proton is a better result than the native Linux one.
The processing power is there but the actual game support is not, which is the more important part. There are some games that support it but at least 3/4th of my Steam library won't run on a macbook.
Even games which used to run on mac mostly stopped after 32bit support was killed.
I'd like to meet the person that supposed this to you, and ask them what games they play.
The M1 Ultra got 70% of the frames of an RTX 3090 on Tomb Raider[0], so I suppose they're right. Performance-per-watt monsters.
And Apple GPUs have only gotten better.
[0]https://techjourneyman.com/img/blog/m1-ultra-vs-rtx-3090-ben...
That wasn't really my question. The M1 Ultra is a 5nm chip up against the 8nm RTX 3090 - for >$2000 and 220W+ you'd kinda hope the M1 Ultra outperforms the 8nm stuff.
My question is, what games are people playing on Mac? Tomb Raider is one of ~6 AAA titles that was ported to Mac in the last decade. All the other big-ticket games - GTA V, Arc Raiders, Elden Ring - are all hamstrung by Apple's terrible translation software and don't run much better with Crossover either.
Apple Silicon, strictly speaking, is the least adept hardware that you can own for gaming. If you are a gamer, almost every single other GPU on the market would perform better for your needs.
I have an RTX 5090 and am an avid gamer. When I travel I use my M1 MacBook Air and play indie games like Slay the Spire, Hades 2, Balatro, and Hollow Knight Silksong. Not cutting edge but definitely cutting edge fun. Those games run with no difficulties.
Slay the Spire 2 is in early access and has some major issues running but I suspect that’s some issues in the game engine because it’s not framerate but some sort of hitching that makes button presses not register.
YapYap which is an intentionally retro ugly 3D style runs barely in a playable state on the M1, but it got me through in a pinch when my kid wanted us to both play.
If I want to play AAA I fall back to my desktop, you can stream using Moonlight or Parsec but unless both sides are wired it isn’t great.
All of those games are simple enough to run in cheap phones, so not really a very informative data point, is it?
He asked what games are serious gamers playing on a Mac and I gave an answer.
Mobile games tend to not fit under serious gamer umbrella.
You really had to squeeze those numbers through those filters to get that diction out, didn't you? :P
My 16" M1 Max is kinda crap at running games - I'd put it somewhere around cheaper laptops with 3050 series GPUs.
Googlebook sounds funny now, but so did iPad when it was announced.
The Googlebook name won't stick around for that long. It'll be like the Nexus and Pixel C, around for 1-3 revisions, canned, then brought back a few years later.
They should bring back the Nexus line. It's more fitting nowadays.
I still remember the Maxipad jokes.
It's sad that the M5 Apple chips don't support Linux better. I'm in the market for a laptop, and I'd buy a MBP in a heartbeat if I could wipe it and put Debian on it.
My 2013 MBP was going strong with Debian until the battery started puffing up last year, and I finally had to recycle it.
I get it, I know I'm not their market, but it still pains me because it was a great laptop.
What is more sad is that no one in the Linux world has taken the bull by the horn like those three former Apple engineers who got a license from Arm to design Arm chips why hasn’t anyone taken the leap in the Linux world to make that happen for Linux OS? In short, that isn’t Apples job it’s been 35 years for someone in Linux land to step up to the plate.
The Neo is amazing as an "AI thin client" the Googlebook seems to be trying to be.
> I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook"
A "GBook"? "Goog"? "Gook"? "Glook"? "Boogle"?
So, I'm not usually one to point these out but one of those words is considered pretty offensive by some and I am assuming that was not your intention.
The spelling maybe, but not if pronounced as "book"
What, you mean you don’t want to sound like a turkey when describing your computer to others?
> I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo
I would recommend the same. I absolutely love my Neo. It's such a nice machine for the price.
>I really don't see the market fit for this,
Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power experience that you can get on a Googlebook for half the price? Especially considering you can install linux on it natively.
Other then that, Gemini is the biggest advantage. Google can offer Gemini for free because its TPUs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Nvidia stuff. Even free tier Gemini is really good considering it can integrate with a bunch of your stuff like google docs, and the lower last gen models have pretty generous usage limits.
Overall, if you are in Android ecosystem, you don't really even need a cheap laptop anymore, considering things like Samsung Dex exist.
> Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power experience that you can get on a Googlebook for half the price?
What makes you think a googlebook will be half the price of a macbook neo?
Also, a used M1 macbook air is $300 on swappa/ebay and will be even better than the neo anyway. It's still more performant than every other non-Apple ARM based laptop/chromebook on the market and will have far superior build quality.
Kompanio Ultra Chromebooks are faster and have a touch screen for use as a tablet or developing mobile-friendly apps. No point in a MacBook Air.
> Kompanio Ultra Chromebooks are faster
Lol. There is zero chance the low end mobile phone SoC shipped in those is remotely as fast as a six year old M1. Even flagship SoCs from qualcomm and samsung still do not exceed it's performance yet.
> Lol. There is zero chance the low end mobile phone SoC shipped in those is remotely as fast as a six year old M1.
Go look up some benchmarks, the Kompanio Ultra 910 is very comparable in speed to the Apple M1.
It's not really a "low end mobile phone SoC" - it's a Chromebook-specific chip with Cortex-X925 and Cortex-X4 cores.
Cortex-C1-based SoCs are faster but only available in phones to date, which gives them less thermal room.
Anecdotally, I own both an M1 and a Kompanio Ultra 910 device, and they feel subjectively very similar from a performance standpoint.
You're right. It's faster. It's an M2 class chip.
> Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power
I pre-ordered a Neo on a whim to use as a couch laptop alongside my work laptop and gaming computer. It's so fast. It blows everything out of the water when it comes to interactivity.
Plus the whole build quality, screen, touchpad and speakers are all so much better than the work Latitude. Linux support is lacking, but it's still a full usable Unix.
> Google can offer Gemini for free because its TPUs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Nvidia stuff. Even free tier Gemini is really good considering it can integrate with a bunch of your stuff like google docs, and the lower last gen models have pretty generous usage limits
Good point, that could work. Buy this and you get so many years of Gemini for free and such. "Why pay Anthropic $200/month for Claude when you can buy this and get Gemini for free for a few years". OpenAI and Anthropic are not going to make their own devices most likely either to compete.
Having seen how people managed to run Cyberpunk 2077 on the Neo with okayish frame rates I don't think there's a single ARM laptop out there that could deliver that performance on Linux. Maybe I'm wrong though.
Surface Pro 11 is slighly more than Neo and runs cyberpunk.
These things are $250?! Where did you find that info?
I would rather buy this shit than anything Apple.
Of course, there are more than 2 options for laptops. Thankfully those two shit companies didn't get to round up that market yet.