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<item>
<title>My favorite device is a Chromebook</title>
<link>https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/blob/main/2024-08-05/01-my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook.md</link>
<description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the posts in this blog (including this one) and most of I would call&#xA;&amp;quot;personal computing&amp;quot; that I do nowadays is mostly done in one of the most&#xA;unremarkable devices that I own: a cheap &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/lenovo/lenovo-edu-chromebooks/ideapad-duet-3-chromebook-11-inch,-qlc/len101i0034&#34;&gt;Chromebook Duet&#xA;3&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;that I bought for around EUR300. I was thinking why, because it is woefully&#xA;underpowered: a &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.anandtech.com/show/16696/qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-7c-gen-2-entrylevel-pc-and-chromebook-refresh&#34;&gt;Snapdragon 7c Gen&#xA;2&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;a CPU that was already considered slow 3 years ago, coupled with an eMMC for&#xA;storage, that is not much faster than a HDD. At least I have the 8GB RAM&#xA;version instead of the 4GB one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a hybrid device, one that can be used as either a tablet or laptop, but&#xA;it is compromised experience in both cases: as a tablet, it lacks the better&#xA;touch optimised interface from iOS or Android; as a laptop, you have to depend&#xA;on the stand to adjust the screen, and the detachable keyboard is worse than&#xA;any laptop I have ever owned: getting keys stucked and characters being&#xA;duplicated as a result is a common occurence. It is not so bad that I can&#39;t get&#xA;things done though. About the trackpad: its biggest quality is that I never&#xA;feel the need to use the touchscreen in laptop mode, that is to say that it is&#xA;acceptable. Just crank up the pointer speed in ChromeOS settings, otherwise you&#xA;never get anywhere since the trackpad is so small. There is also an active&#xA;stylus, that helped me sometimes when I needed to sign something but otherwise&#xA;I can&#39;t comment too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I really love this device. It is generally the only device that I bring in&#xA;trips nowadays, because while it is compromised it works well enough: I can use&#xA;to consume media in tablet mode (the fact that ChromeOS supports Android apps&#xA;is a plus in those cases), browse the web and even do Linux stuff (more about&#xA;this later). The fact that it is small (the size remembers me of a&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook&#34;&gt;netbook&lt;/a&gt;), lightweight (~1KG, including&#xA;the keyboard), has a good screen (that is bright and HiDPI) and good battery&#xA;life (I don&#39;t have numbers but I almost never worry about it) is what makes&#xA;this device the perfect companion to trips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it has 2 USB-C ports and supports DisplayPort alt-mode, so it means you&#xA;can charge it, connect to a external display and peripherals, all at the same&#xA;time. Sadly, the maximum output resolution I got was 1080p, altough some people&#xA;at Reddit &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/zh27tg/comment/izku724/?utm_source=share&amp;amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;amp;utm_term=1&amp;amp;utm_content=share_button&#34;&gt;seems to been&#xA;successful&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;at 1440p, and the specs suggests it supports 4k. It may be my Dell S3423DWC&#xA;monitor being wonky, the fact that it is Ultrawide or the cable, who knows? I&#xA;even tried to change the monitor to &amp;quot;High Resolution&amp;quot; mode in settings, but to&#xA;no avail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ChromeOS is also really interesting nowadays. To start, it is designed from the&#xA;ground up to be a &lt;a href=&#34;https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3438631&#34;&gt;secure computing&#xA;environment&lt;/a&gt;, probably&#xA;the most secure OS for consumers right now. Being a Chrome-first OS makes it a&#xA;compromised experience, for example, it is the only device that I use Chrome as&#xA;my main browser (since I personally prefer Firefox). But having a OS that boots&#xA;fast is great: I never worry about OS updates because I know the device will be&#xA;ready in seconds after a reboot. And the whole desktop experience inside the&#xA;ChromeOS desktop is good, having shortcuts for many operations so you can get&#xA;things done fast, and support for virtual desktops (ChromeOS call it &amp;quot;desks&amp;quot;)&#xA;means you can organise your windows as much as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what I think makes ChromeOS really powerful is&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://chromeos.dev/en/linux&#34;&gt;Crostini&lt;/a&gt;, a full Linux VM that you can run&#xA;inside ChromeOS. It runs Debian (it seems you can &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/wiki/howto/run-other-distros/&#34;&gt;run other&#xA;distros&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;though) with a deep integration with ChromeOS, so you can run even graphical&#xA;programs without issues (including OpenGL!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/raw/main/2024-08-05/Screenshot_2024-08-05_21.22.29.png&#34; alt=&#34;Fastfetch inside Crostini with gitk running side-by-side.&#34;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/raw/main/2024-08-05/Screenshot_2024-08-05_21.39.58.png&#34; alt=&#34;Running glxgears inside Crostini.&#34;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all thanks to&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEAD/vm_tools/sommelier/README.md&#34;&gt;Sommelier&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;a nested Wayland compositor that runs inside Crostini and allow both Wayland&#xA;and X11 applications to be forwarded to ChromeOS. The integration is so good&#xA;that I can run Firefox inside Crostini and works well enough, but sadly Firefox&#xA;is too slow in this device (I am not sure if the issue is ChromeOS or Firefox,&#xA;but I suspect the later since Google does some optimisation per device).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One interesting tidbit about the OpenGL situation in this device: this seems to&#xA;be the first Chromebook to ship with open source drivers, thanks to Freedreno.&#xA;There is &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mnjSmN03VM&#34;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; very interesting&#xA;presentation done by Rob Clark in XDC 2021, that I recommended anyone&#xA;interested in free drivers to watch (the reference design of Duet 3 is&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://chromeunboxed.com/chromebook-tablet-snapdragon-7c-homestar-coachz-strongbad&#34;&gt;Strongbad&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Crostini integration is probably the best VM integration with Linux I ever&#xA;saw in an OS: you can manage files inside the VM, share directories between the&#xA;OS and VM, copy and paste works between the two, GUI applications installed&#xA;inside the VM appear in the ChromeOS menu, memory allocation inside the VM is&#xA;transparent, etc. Even the themes for Linux GUI applications are customised to&#xA;match ChromeOS. It is unironically one of the best Linux desktop experiences I&#xA;ever had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I am using Nix, but since the Crostini integration depends on some&#xA;services being configured and installed, I decided to run Nix inside Debian&#xA;instead of NixOS and run &lt;a href=&#34;https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.xhtml#sec-install-standalone&#34;&gt;Home-Manager&#xA;standalone&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;I recommend checking the official &lt;a href=&#34;https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Installing_Nix_on_Crostinihttps://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Installing_Nix_on_Crostini&#34;&gt;NixOS Wiki article about&#xA;Crostini&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;that details how to register applications in ChromeOS (so desktop applications&#xA;appear in menu) and use &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nix-community/nixGL&#34;&gt;nixGL&lt;/a&gt; to make&#xA;OpenGL applications work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said at the start of the article, the device is woefully slow thanks to&#xA;its CPU and eMMC. It does mean that, for example, activating my Home-Manager&#xA;configuration takes a while (around 1 minute, vs a few seconds in my laptop).&#xA;But it is much faster than say,&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nix-community/nix-on-droid-app&#34;&gt;nix-on-droid&lt;/a&gt;, that the&#xA;last time I tried in a much more powerful device (&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_pad_5-11042.php&#34;&gt;Xiaomi Pad&#xA;5&lt;/a&gt;), took 30 minutes until I&#xA;just decided to cancel the operation. Having a proper VM instead of&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot&#34;&gt;proot&lt;/a&gt; makes all the difference here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can even do some light programming here: using my&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/blob/main/2024-08-01/01-troubleshooting-zsh-lag-and-solutions-with-nix.md&#34;&gt;ZSH&lt;/a&gt; and&#xA;neovim configuration (including LSP for coding) is reasonable fast. For&#xA;example, I did most of the code that &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/blob/main/2024-07-29/01-quick-bits-why-you-should-automate-everything.md&#34;&gt;powers this&#xA;blog&lt;/a&gt; using&#xA;this Chromebook. If I need more power, I can use the &lt;a href=&#34;https://tailscale.com/kb/1267/install-chromebook&#34;&gt;Tailscale app for&#xA;Android&lt;/a&gt; to connect to any&#xA;other of my hosts via SSH. Yes, the Tailscale app works in Crostini, sadly&#xA;without MagicDNS, so you need to use the internal Tailscale IPs instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until Google decides to give us a proper VM or user namespaces in Android or&#xA;release a hybrid Chromebook device with better specs, this small Chromebook&#xA;will probably stay as my travel companion, and is one of my favorite devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;</description>
<description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the posts in this blog (including this one) and most of I would call&#xA;&amp;quot;personal computing&amp;quot; that I do nowadays is mostly done in one of the most&#xA;unremarkable devices that I own: a cheap &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/lenovo/lenovo-edu-chromebooks/ideapad-duet-3-chromebook-11-inch,-qlc/len101i0034&#34;&gt;Chromebook Duet&#xA;3&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;that I bought for around EUR300. I was thinking why, because it is woefully&#xA;underpowered: a &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.anandtech.com/show/16696/qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-7c-gen-2-entrylevel-pc-and-chromebook-refresh&#34;&gt;Snapdragon 7c Gen&#xA;2&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;a CPU that was already considered slow 3 years ago, coupled with an eMMC for&#xA;storage, that is not much faster than a HDD. At least I have the 8GB RAM&#xA;version instead of the 4GB one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a hybrid device, one that can be used as either a tablet or laptop, but&#xA;it is compromised experience in both cases: as a tablet, it lacks the better&#xA;touch optimised interface from iOS or Android; as a laptop, you have to depend&#xA;on the stand to adjust the screen, and the detachable keyboard is worse than&#xA;any laptop I have ever owned: getting keys stucked and characters being&#xA;duplicated as a result is a common occurence. It is not so bad that I can&#39;t get&#xA;things done though. About the trackpad: its biggest quality is that I never&#xA;feel the need to use the touchscreen in laptop mode, that is to say that it is&#xA;acceptable. Just crank up the pointer speed in ChromeOS settings, otherwise you&#xA;never get anywhere since the trackpad is so small. There is also an active&#xA;stylus, that helped me sometimes when I needed to sign something but otherwise&#xA;I can&#39;t comment too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I really love this device. It is generally the only device that I bring in&#xA;trips nowadays, because while it is compromised it works well enough: I can use&#xA;to consume media in tablet mode (the fact that ChromeOS supports Android apps&#xA;is a plus in those cases), browse the web and even do Linux stuff (more about&#xA;this later). The fact that it is small (the size remembers me of a&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook&#34;&gt;netbook&lt;/a&gt;), lightweight (~1KG, including&#xA;the keyboard), has a good screen (that is bright and HiDPI) and good battery&#xA;life (I don&#39;t have numbers but I almost never worry about it) is what makes&#xA;this device the perfect companion to trips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it has 2 USB-C ports and supports DisplayPort alt-mode, so it means you&#xA;can charge it, connect to a external display and peripherals, all at the same&#xA;time. Sadly, the maximum output resolution I got was 1080p, although some&#xA;people at Reddit &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/zh27tg/comment/izku724/?utm_source=share&amp;amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;amp;utm_term=1&amp;amp;utm_content=share_button&#34;&gt;seems to have&#xA;success&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;at 1440p, and the specs suggests it supports 4k. It may be my Dell S3423DWC&#xA;monitor being wonky, the fact that it is Ultrawide or the cable, who knows? I&#xA;even tried to change the monitor to &amp;quot;High Resolution&amp;quot; mode in settings, but to&#xA;no avail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ChromeOS is also really interesting nowadays. To start, it is designed from the&#xA;ground up to be a &lt;a href=&#34;https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3438631&#34;&gt;secure computing&#xA;environment&lt;/a&gt;, probably&#xA;the most secure OS for consumers right now. Being a Chrome-first OS makes it a&#xA;compromised experience, for example, it is the only device that I use Chrome as&#xA;my main browser (since I personally prefer Firefox). But having a OS that boots&#xA;fast is great: I never worry about OS updates because I know the device will be&#xA;ready in seconds after a reboot. And the whole desktop experience inside the&#xA;ChromeOS desktop is good, having shortcuts for many operations so you can get&#xA;things done fast, and support for virtual desktops (ChromeOS call it &amp;quot;desks&amp;quot;)&#xA;means you can organise your windows as much as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what I think makes ChromeOS really powerful is&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://chromeos.dev/en/linux&#34;&gt;Crostini&lt;/a&gt;, a full Linux VM that you can run&#xA;inside ChromeOS. It runs Debian (it seems you can &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/wiki/howto/run-other-distros/&#34;&gt;run other&#xA;distros&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;though) with a deep integration with ChromeOS, so you can run even graphical&#xA;programs without issues (including OpenGL!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/raw/main/2024-08-05/Screenshot_2024-08-05_21.22.29.png&#34; alt=&#34;Fastfetch inside Crostini with gitk running side-by-side.&#34;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/raw/main/2024-08-05/Screenshot_2024-08-05_21.39.58.png&#34; alt=&#34;Running glxgears inside Crostini.&#34;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all thanks to&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEAD/vm_tools/sommelier/README.md&#34;&gt;Sommelier&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;a nested Wayland compositor that runs inside Crostini and allow both Wayland&#xA;and X11 applications to be forwarded to ChromeOS. The integration is so good&#xA;that I can run Firefox inside Crostini and works well enough, but sadly Firefox&#xA;is too slow in this device (I am not sure if the issue is ChromeOS or Firefox,&#xA;but I suspect the later since Google does some optimisation per device).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One interesting tidbit about the OpenGL situation in this device: this seems to&#xA;be the first Chromebook to ship with open source drivers, thanks to Freedreno.&#xA;There is &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mnjSmN03VM&#34;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; very interesting&#xA;presentation done by Rob Clark in XDC 2021, that I recommended anyone&#xA;interested in free drivers to watch (the reference design of Duet 3 is&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://chromeunboxed.com/chromebook-tablet-snapdragon-7c-homestar-coachz-strongbad&#34;&gt;Strongbad&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Crostini integration is probably the best VM integration with Linux I ever&#xA;saw in an OS: you can manage files inside the VM, share directories between the&#xA;OS and VM, copy and paste works between the two, GUI applications installed&#xA;inside the VM appear in the ChromeOS menu, memory allocation inside the VM is&#xA;transparent, etc. Even the themes for Linux GUI applications are customised to&#xA;match ChromeOS. It is unironically one of the best Linux desktop experiences I&#xA;ever had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I am using Nix, but since the Crostini integration depends on some&#xA;services being configured and installed, I decided to run Nix inside Debian&#xA;instead of NixOS and run &lt;a href=&#34;https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.xhtml#sec-install-standalone&#34;&gt;Home-Manager&#xA;standalone&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;I recommend checking the official &lt;a href=&#34;https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Installing_Nix_on_Crostinihttps://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Installing_Nix_on_Crostini&#34;&gt;NixOS Wiki article about&#xA;Crostini&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;that details how to register applications in ChromeOS (so desktop applications&#xA;appear in menu) and use &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nix-community/nixGL&#34;&gt;nixGL&lt;/a&gt; to make&#xA;OpenGL applications work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said at the start of the article, the device is woefully slow thanks to&#xA;its CPU and eMMC. It does mean that, for example, activating my Home-Manager&#xA;configuration takes a while (around 1 minute, vs a few seconds in my laptop).&#xA;But it is much faster than say,&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/nix-community/nix-on-droid-app&#34;&gt;nix-on-droid&lt;/a&gt;, that the&#xA;last time I tried in a much more powerful device (&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_pad_5-11042.php&#34;&gt;Xiaomi Pad&#xA;5&lt;/a&gt;), took 30 minutes until I&#xA;just decided to cancel the operation. Having a proper VM instead of&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot&#34;&gt;proot&lt;/a&gt; makes all the difference here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can even do some light programming here: using my&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/blob/main/2024-08-01/01-troubleshooting-zsh-lag-and-solutions-with-nix.md&#34;&gt;ZSH&lt;/a&gt; and&#xA;neovim configuration (including LSP for coding) is reasonable fast. For&#xA;example, I did most of the code that &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/blob/main/2024-07-29/01-quick-bits-why-you-should-automate-everything.md&#34;&gt;powers this&#xA;blog&lt;/a&gt; using&#xA;this Chromebook. If I need more power, I can use the &lt;a href=&#34;https://tailscale.com/kb/1267/install-chromebook&#34;&gt;Tailscale app for&#xA;Android&lt;/a&gt; to connect to any&#xA;other of my hosts via SSH. Yes, the Tailscale app works in Crostini, sadly&#xA;without MagicDNS, so you need to use the internal Tailscale IPs instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until Google decides to give us a proper VM or user namespaces in Android or&#xA;release a hybrid Chromebook device with better specs, this small Chromebook&#xA;will probably stay as my travel companion, and is one of my favorite devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;</description>
<guid>https://github.com/thiagokokada/blog/blob/main/2024-08-05/01-my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook.md</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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