About Chromebooks

Very disappointed that Microsoft recently killed all support for office android apps on Chromebooks asking users to use the web version instead (which has all sorts of limitations even considering the android apps having limited functionality in the first place but atleast allowed offline access and some quick non-web features)

So now we get Microsoft trying to get android apps into their own devices instead. I would say Google should insist that support for office apps come back into chromebooks if they want any sort of support but no they wont as they are saying "we are happy chromeos is a great option for office (web)apps"

The windows "cloudbooks" were never worth a look - I guess this is how large companies behave. (I have no hatred towards any tech / company - use android / linux / chromebooks / windows all the time - just bizzare that well functioning android apps are now being taken out of chromebooks)

references : https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/microsoft-ending-chromebook-support-for-office-android-apps-in-september/

I've been using a Google Pixelbook (their flagship Chromebook product) as my main development machine for the past couple months, and I love it.

The ChromeOS "Crostini" project allows you to run a full Debian instance in a container, but with the other benefits of a Chromebook and ChromeOS. Each new release of ChromeOS brings better enhancements to Crostini, e.g. right now backups are manual but a native "one click" backup is coming soon - https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/crostini-linux-backup-restore-import-export-tremplin-chrome-os-74/ . FWIW some of the tools I run are the IntelliJ suite, Atom, postgres, Docker, etc.

IMO Linux on the desktop is awesome, it just happens to be running in a container on ChromeOS.

Chrome is used by about 3.8 billion people [1]. So, if this is rolled out to every chrome user over the next year or two, this would generate about 15 Exabytes of traffic. It's difficult to find accurate, useful numbers on this, but lets assume 29 grams of CO2e per GB, this would be about 450k tons of CO2e. This in turn, equates to average household CO2 expenditure of almost 300k households.

So make your own judgement, but this seem pretty significant to me.

[1]: https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/global-chrome-user-base/
[2]: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-fact-checking-the-headlines
[3]: https://www.anthesisgroup.com/insights/what-exactly-is-1-tonne-of-co2/

There's a third option if you don't need too much horsepower and like portability: Chrome OS. With recent Crostini release (https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/chrome-os-69-stable-release-project-crostini-linux-apps/) Linux apps are supported, effectively enabling Chrome OS laptops to support largest number of apps compared to any other device on the planet - Chrome OS apps, Android apps and Linux apps combined. Top end Pixelbook comes with 16 GB RAM and core i7 CPU.