100 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
100 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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permalink: "/{{ year }}/{{ month }}/{{ day }}/samsung-chromebook-a-short-review"
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title: "Samsung Chromebook - a short review"
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published_date: "2014-03-03 15:18:00 +0100"
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layout: post.liquid
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data:
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route: blog
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---
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One week ago I purchased a Chromebook. To be exact I purchased the Samsung
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Chromebook 303c12 (the one without UMTS). It arrived on Tuesday.
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I wanted a small second device for some day-to-day stuff. I already own a
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tablet, but even with an external keyboard it is not the best option if you
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want to do a little bit more multi-tasking or writing. As Chromebooks are
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cheap and used devices can be bought for just over 100€, I went for it.
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## Hardware
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The Samsung Chromebook looks a lot like Macbooks, which is not bad at all. But
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in contrast to Macbooks the complete case is plastic. It feels rather cheap and
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is easily scratched. The keyboard thus is good. With its slightly unusual
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layout including a Search key and other special keys it works perfectly inside
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Chrome OS. Just one small problem: I couldn't set a nodeadkeys-layout, so `^`
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or `~` takes two keystrokes to type. The screen has a good size and a
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resolution of 1366x768, which is the same as my slightly bigger Thinkpad. From
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my Thinkpad I was used to great colors no matter what perspective I had. Not so
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with the Chromebook. The slightest tilt messes with the colors. I feel like I
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need to be a lot more careful with this device than with my Thinkpad, but it's
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not intended to be my outdoor and day-to-day device, so I'm fine with it.
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## Software
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This thing is booted damn fast. In just about 10-15 seconds from cold start it
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is fully loaded and usable, if only suspended it's even faster. But in real
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usage it's noticeable that it is powered by a slow ARM processor.
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Sites load fast and are mostly lag-free, except from Google's own
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social network Google+, which lags horribly.
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As it uses Chrome OS there's an App for almost everything. Right now I use
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[TextDown][] or [Text.app][] for writing, but I also came across [Poe][],
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another Markdown editor with instant preview. Let's see what I stick with, I
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have not decided yet. All of them lack a few things, but again all of them are
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Chrome apps programmed in Javascript, so it's possible to extend them to my
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needs.
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Keep in mind that all installed applications and most settings are synced with
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the Chrome instance on your desktop if that is linked to the same Google
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account. This was a bit annoying at first, but I can live with that.
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Apart from that I'm not totally happy with a browser-only environment, but
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Chrome OS got you covered here as well. It comes with an usable shell in
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Developer Mode. Booting into Developer Mode is as easy as hitting Esc, Reload
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and Power, then hitting Ctrl+D in the Recovery screen, pressing it again and
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waiting 15 minutes, letting the Chromebook do it's thing. Yeah, you get [the
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idea][chrome-wiki].
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The next thing I did was installing [crouton][], the "Chromium OS Universal
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Chroot Environment".
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Once this is done (and please don't fully shutdown the device, you would have
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to go through all of this again), download the script, open a shell and execute
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it. A few moments later you have a fully working Ubuntu-like chroot at your
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hands. With this I now have a device with nearly everything I need (proper SSH
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client, a shell, vim, …). If you do this as well, install [Crosh Window][] to
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get a window for the shell itself, where things like Ctrl+W work as expected
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(and don't close the window). Downside at the moment: umlauts are not supported in crosh.
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With this device came an upgrade for Google Drive including 100 Gb of extra
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space. Linux clients seem a bit limited at the moment. I only found Insync,
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which costs 15$ once (and you're only informed about this _after_ you installed
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the application and registered your account) and grive, which only syncs on
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invocation and exits afterwards (no long-running sync-all-the-time mode). Thus
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Google Drive is not a real option right now.
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Another problem is: all my data is already shared through Dropbox, switching
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to yet another Cloud storage comes with it's own problems. As there is still no
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Arm client for Dropbox, using it in a chroot is not an option either.
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For now I settled with [btsync][], the Torrent-powered Dropbox replacement.
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It's still proprietary but the easiest option right now (and ARM-compatible).
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Apart from the usual \*nix stuff there are some web apps I will try to use more
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on this device, especially things like [Nitrous.IO][nitrous] or [Cloud9][c9]
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for a development environment in the cloud.
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And I need to clean up my config scripts for various things to make it more
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easy to share them between devices.
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## Conclusion
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The Samsung Chromebook is a great, cheap device, which is quite good for most
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things I need it for. The default OS is limited, but under the hood it's just
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Linux, so with the right tools it can be used to its full extend.
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[TextDown]: https://github.com/badboy/TextDown
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[Crosh Window]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nhbmpbdladcchdhkemlojfjdknjadhmh
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[Text.app]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mmfbcljfglbokpmkimbfghdkjmjhdgbg
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[crouton]: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
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[Poe]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/poe-markdown-editor/mpghdlgejmakmgbigejnjnmgdjaddhje
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[chrome-wiki]: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/samsung-arm-chromebook
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[nitrous]: https://www.nitrous.io/
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[c9]: http://c9.io/
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[btsync]: http://www.bittorrent.com/sync
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