I originally meant for this to be my first post and being honest, this is the reason I made this blog because I found myself making the point about chromeOS NOT being as bad. So let me present to you my thesis on why ChromeOS ain't that bad.

What is chromeOS and why the 🤬 do you use it?

So for those who don't know, chromeOS is a "operating system" made by Google and designed for chromebooks. I say "operating system" very loosely though as I have been told many times that I am wrong ❌ to call it an operating system as it is literally just Google chrome with a nav bar.

Pitched at students 📚, the chromebook is great for note taking 📝, web browsing 🌐 and overall being so cheap that if you were to destroy it, getting a new one wouldn't be that much of an issue.

Me being a student, and needing a note-taking device for uni, I bought this chromebook for £180 💸 and also got a Chromecast with it. Deal! And it worked for what I needed.

The ascension to using ChromeOS for everything 👿

Here I am, sorted for how I am going to take notes but when it came to hackathons, I was having to take 2 laptops 💻 and it was just a hassle. I needed a way to program on a chromebook. My original idea, duel booking. Issues with that, the NVMe SSD 💾 in the chromebook is 16Gb so I wasn't going to get another operating system on there and also ChromeOS is extreamly locked down 🔒 to the point where you have to enable a legacy mode to enter the bios to change boot priority. Not ideal if you ask me.

Amazingly, Google did something great and enabled access to a really stripped back version of the Linux kernel that runs the OS, basically allowing installation of Debian versions of applications. Basically, to cut a long story short, Visual Studio and Node and Docker 🐳 installed later and I can run almost anything I want to on a Chromebook!

Serverless computing 🖥

So with all that hassle, it begs the question, what about things like Azure, AWS and Google Cloud ☁. The idea of having a machine in the cloud that you can access a terminal for through a web interface. It's a great point but I am not wanting to spin up a VM each time I want to do some development work. I do love serverless compting though and find myself using things like Blob storage 💧 and cloud based document storage. Check out Doorstep drams (my most recent project) 🥃

Going forward living with a Chromebook

So while all this is going on, ChromeOS has defiantly improved since I first 'broke' ChromeOS and it's a lot cooler 😎

• Install Android apps on ChromeOS
• The Google Assistant is now available
• Closer mobile phone tethering for hotspot sharing with Android phones and lots more.

So overall, living with a Chromebook as my only machine is a lot easier than you might think and if you need something more powerful then sure but don,t go spending 💰💰💰 on a high end chromebook and if you can't hack using a terminal then sure, get a Windows laptop but I am gonna stay in my corner with my chromebook.

Happy Hacking!

Tom 💣