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I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook

131 points by speckx

by Aurornis

4 subcomments

Going from complaining about Apple not having enough polish in the fine details of their UI to suggesting we all switch to Chromebooks is so completely inconsistent that there must be other motivations.
In one post they're complaining about things like Apple having the search bar in different locations in different apps, and in the next post they're seriously trying to tell us that a laptop that requires modifying the software and running shell commands copied from the internet so you can run a text editor to change settings and drivers is the solution? They dropped a note about how they haven't actually tried development on the chromebook at the end but say they assume it would be okay. For someone telling us to switch to Chromebooks, they haven't even finished doing their own homework
Linking to an SEO spam website called technical.city for performance comparisons is another clue that this choice was driven by something else first and the reasoning was backfilled. The new MediaTek part is fast, but there's more to laptop performance than a single bar chart from a site citing ancient benchmarks like PassMark.
I can't read this as anything other than an attempt to make a contrarian choice and then present it as the superior alternative.

by _imnothere

8 subcomments

I can't think of any valid reason for a person with sane mind to do this. Yes, macOS is somewhat closed, but it's definitely more open than ChromeOS.

by vile_wretch

4 subcomments

> Figma and Spotify have some of the best web apps out there as well, so that's all good too!
The Spotify web app is still much more limited than the desktop app.
> Did you know that Adobe ported Photoshop etc to web, with all the AI bells and whistles and the web apps perform incredibly well?
Perfect if all you need out of Photoshop is the AI portion, I guess.
> As a side note, it is no surprise that Adobe's suite of creative apps [...] now work incredibly well on the web across all operating systems
They literally don't.
> Quickshare (the Airdrop alternative) ACTUALLY WORKS
Saying this like Airdrop isn't one of Apple's most bulletproof "just works" features ever

by wildekek

4 subcomments

I don't really get what the problem with MacOS is. It never gets in my way, so why would I switch? Yes, I found Liquid Glass ugly and two days later I completely forgot about it.

by KillenBoek

0 subcomment

Author admitted he did nothing worthwhile that justified a full fledged workstation and adopted a tablet with keyboard.
As a Mac user I was pleasantly surprised when I switched to a arch Linux based distribution.

by notme43

0 subcomment

Not even a Mac user and have been legitimately considering a move like this.
My desktop and Thinkpad run Gentoo. A NAS I have at home is the build host. I am a business software consultant, and a common thread in all of my interactions is: I need to be prepared. If I'm fiddling with "hang on my mic doesn't work" or "i need to reboot", I look silly.
An onsite visit might be in an executive board room, or a closet in the back of a warehouse with a TV from 2007 and a VGA connector.
If I need software installed quick, like Zoom or something, Flatpak gets me 95% there. Yes, I could use Ubuntu or something normal, but I like portage and long for the day I can use FreeBSD seriously on the desktop.
So enter Chromebooks, which come with portage, can use Flatpak, and the OS is basically just a web browser. Plus, I don't have to wrestle with SELinux, or any of the other nitty gritty stuff that gets in the way of real work™. It's either a PWA or an Android app, and it just works.

by egl2020

1 subcomments

I went the other way: from a Pixelbook to a Macbook Air. I mostly do SW development in the CLI, so the Linux subsystem on the chromebook was fine, as is macports/homebrew/etc. on the mac. I would still be using the Pixelbook if I could have replaced its battery. The low-end Air had good price-performance tradeoff, and the Neo would probably be today's choice.

by tantalor

0 subcomment

Choosing an OS 101
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/mx4dni/cho...
Do you fear technology?
> Yes
Is your daddy rich?
> No
ChromeOS

by nolist_policy

1 subcomments

I don't know why the author plays down the versatility of Chromebooks/ChromeOS so much. You can install the Linux Dev VM with 5 clicks in the settings. You get a fully featured Debian VM with nested virtualization support and seamless Wayland, VirGL and USB passtrough.

by loloquwowndueo

4 subcomments

Good Lord, what next? “I switched from Mac to Windows and you can too”?
Might make sense if the Chromebook can be degoogled and set up with a clean Linux distro. Barring that, a regular laptop with Linux may be an option.

by hmokiguess

3 subcomments

Chrome OS? No, thank you. I'll stay with macOS and keep hoping for the Asahi Linux dream

by tempestnick

0 subcomment

I recently had to turn in my work Macbook and started using personal Lenovo Thinkpad E14 -- last or second to last gen.
I have to say that everything, aside from keyboard and hardware (ie CPU, storage etc) on it is bad. Screen is bad, sound si horrible, webcam makes me look like I died a couple of days ago -- all gray and blurry, battery is obviously have nothing on Apple silicon laptops, fans are noisy, touchpad is bad, all is bad. But what impressed me the most are USB-C ports. They are somehow bad too. There's no grip, there's no feedback, you just kind of put a cable somewhere in them and hope it doesn't arc -- because sometimes it sounds like electrical arcing in there. Not quite pencil in a bucket, but not far off. And the thing is new, how do you manage that on a new business laptop? I'm very impressed, in the worst way possible.

by tthayer

0 subcomment

I have to switch between an M4 macbook pro and a Lenovo Chromebook Plus multiple times a day and I will say, while it isn't terrible, the keyboard and trackpad on the Lenovo have nothing on the Macbook. The experience with using USB devices (yubikey in particular) through the android layer is also real shitty.

by tapoxi

0 subcomment

I really enjoy ChromeOS, though I'm worried a lot of its simplicity will go away as Google transitions to Android-based laptops. My wife and I use an Asus Chromebook Flip as a kitchen/living room computer that we don't need to think about. No software updates, it just surfs the web and we can flip it into tablet mode if we want to.

by internet2000

0 subcomment

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

by bastard_op

0 subcomment

>> it seems that Signal's team is actively working on linking additional Android devices, and very soon we can simply solve this by using Signal for Android.
Wishful thinking, this has been a problem since tablets (android or ios) were a thing and trying to use one linked to your phone.

by Pfhortune

0 subcomment

I'm interested in the hardware on this... does anyone know if this laptop can boot arm64 Linux natively? Perhaps with an alternate bootloader install?
I've read about plenty of other Chromebooks that can do that, but I can't find any info on booting Linux on this one.
ChromeOS would be so much more compelling if it could be degoogled... An Ungoogled-ChromiumOS would be amazing.

by fattybob

0 subcomment

I’m expecting delivery of a used Lenovo yoga thinkpad simply to run one piece of software that I previously ran on an older intel Mac using a virtual windows drive, sadly the security on that software (dongles!!) will not and possibly will never run on new Apple silicon, so I’m gonna be lugging a win machine around for any projects that call upon that security software. I worked with the developer and tried a a patched software key for the same security, but sadly it didn’t work either. I’ll still be sticking to Mac for most of my work as I just prefer the way things predictably operate, but I am now going to have a windows toy to play with too, even if it’s actually for work !

by porphyra

0 subcomment

> no fucking way there's a Mediatek chip out there that's as good as M2?!? right!?
Actually Mediatek is pretty underrated. Isn't the upcoming Dimensity 9600 Pro on par with the M5 [0]? And they also designed the CPU part of the GB10 in the NVIDIA DGX Spark, which is roughly on par with the CPU of the AMD AI Max+ 395 and M3 Max 14 core [1] [2].
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1so1wyv/dimensity...
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/17762799?baseli...
[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=m3+max

by 627467

0 subcomment

I investigated this path. In terms of comparable performance per watt komapnio laptops are competitive. But not on price. Then there's the aspect of how open/closed each ecosystem is. While iOS is an prison like ecosystem, macos still remains quite open, more open than many chromebooks.
Asahi linux exist and i was surprised to see that these arm chromebooks just lack bios/uefi that allows me to install anything other than chromeos.
So, yeah, you can virtualize other OS on chromeos but so can you on macos

by aykutseker

0 subcomment

Grass is greener works at month two. By month nine your muscle memory is still wrong.

by copypaper

0 subcomment

I just have a workstation at home that I SSH into from whatever device I feel like (within my tailnet). All my tools available on the CLI and vscode available via remote-ssh. You can connect from an iPad, macbook, chromebook, etc. The only thing it doesn't handle well is creative apps (video editing, blender, photoshop, etc.).
Obviously this whole setup requires an internet connection, but I'm rarely without one so it works great for me. Anyone else do something similar?

by coredog64

1 subcomments

I actually tried this last year and the show stopper was Citrix. The version for Chromebooks is some abomination that hasn't been kept recent and so fails validation with my employer's Citrix infra.

by Marsymars

1 subcomments

I have this exact laptop - I just use it for casual web browsing, but it does have a significant problem that I've encountered - although it has a 3.5mm stereo port, it's unusable due to static sounds.
Possibly this bug that's been floating around for the past 6 years: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/172339479

0 subcomment

by theanonymousone

1 subcomments

A Mediatek chip rivalling Apple M2? Is this claim supportable?

by yegle

0 subcomment

To me the most amazing thing of using Chromebook is that you can run the Tailscale _Android_ app and get your ChromeOS connected to your tailnet.

by pjmlp

0 subcomment

Basically someone that doesn't take advantage of macOS features, doesn't develop for Apple platforms, is happy with a thin client OS, alright I guess.

by BirAdam

0 subcomment

My biggest issues with ChromeOS revolve around crap keyboards, bad/clunky Linux implementations (unless you just replace ChromeOS, but why not just get a cheap or older laptop?), and not trusting Google at all.

by cryo32

0 subcomment

I love these articles. I await the inevitable post-mortem 6-9 months down the line.

by clear0250

1 subcomments

So we're calling normal usb ports "old school" now?

by cromka

0 subcomment

Are these ARM Chromebooks actually fully hackable to use any other Linux OS? AFAIK Google upstreams DTBs for them?

by shibaprasadb

0 subcomment

I am not very tech-savvy, mostly into Analytics - DS. I love my Mac. The whole UX is far superior compared to Windows or a Chromebook.

by randomeel

0 subcomment

I am never using ChromeOS ever. The reasons are too many to list here.

by randomeel

0 subcomment

I am never using ChromeOS. The reasons are too many to list here

by xacky

0 subcomment

Might become more interesting if the Android powered laptop rumors are true.

by midnight_eclair

0 subcomment

no, thanks

by slashdave

0 subcomment

Some of us actually want to get work done

by bruki

0 subcomment

Ragebait pandemic spread here too?

by curtisblaine

0 subcomment

> - If you rely on / heavily use AI tools, you can easily use Claude's Web App etc so that's super cool but also things like Jan also exist for Linux and I haven't tried, but you can use that as well for a more native experience.
Sure, Claude Web App is an adequate replacement to full-fledged Claude Code, and then there is also something that I didn't bother to try but maybe you can try it after you bought a new laptop. What the hell.

by doener

0 subcomment

But I don't want to.

by bak3y

0 subcomment

No, no I can't.

by massysett

0 subcomment

“Liquid Glass and Apple's software incompetence is absolutely universally hated,”
Author is in a bubble. I know many iPhone users and none complain about Liquid Glass. When it landed on my phone, I shrugged.

by NDlurker

1 subcomments

What is that terrible font? I've never seen an "h" look like that

by h4kunamata

0 subcomment

I am Linux user, moving from a terrible macOS to a dying Chromebook OS, has to be the worst take by 2026 standards.

by deafpolygon

0 subcomment

> Apple's software incompetence is absolutely universally hated
Weird. Maybe he spent too much time on ChatGPT and got AI psychosis.

by Jamesbeam

0 subcomment

I do not agree with what he wrote, but I had an enjoyable reading experience, which is rare these days. That is some clean blog design.

by baal80spam

0 subcomment

But why?

by ramses0

1 subcomments

I'm relatively uniquely qualified to weigh in here... I've been linux-native for decades now on my home desktops (debian), and the last time I used windows for work was ~2005-ish with work Mac laptops, and "disposable" chromebooks at home for personal use + travel.
1) It started with Crouton (open source, "let's get access to the underlying linux system"), and worked pretty well. IIRC you had to switch to "dev mode" to get access to it.
2) Crostini and all the layer-cake isolation is wildly impressive! ...it's more VM-based with suuuper adjudicated interaction boundaries between `chromeos` and the underlying linux vm.
Arch overview: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...
Seneschal (file management/isolation): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...
Sommelier (gui passthrough/punch-through): https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA...
3) I've recently (intentionally) switched to their new "Baguette" beta VM/Container (you can talk to google AI mode about it, but general access docs and links are fairly sparse: "...a ChromeOS architectural shift (arriving around v142-146) that enables containerless Linux Virtual Machines, running directly via KVM instead of LXD. It removes the middle container layer for increased efficiency and flexibility, allowing for advanced features like direct PCI passthrough, while providing improved storage management compared to legacy Crostini."
4) I think over the last ~15 years I've gone from 4gb => 8gb => 16gb (just recently) and sticking with "premium-ish" dev-centric laptops (mostly: linux, git, web dev, inkscape, random hacking, etc). Currently the Acer Spin 714, previously Samsung XE930QCA... both "tablet adjacent" with full fliparound or "tent style" for watching a movie or doodling with styluses.
Bang-for-Buck, I was able to get the Spin714 for ~$300 @ 16gb ram (used-ish, off ebay) which is a STEAL, and similar story for the Samsung one. They're definitely very capable machines, and treating them as "dumb terminals with a VM I can pop open and scp files to a remote host or git push" is fantastic!
HOWEVER: beware! Google w/ Baguette is stupidly complicated on how to open a port on the device itself for other computers to be able to access servers on the local device. I argued with the google AI for like an hour trying to figure out the best way to allow `git pull my-chromebook.localdomain:./Git/some-repo` and eventually had to settle on a raw `ssh` reverse proxy pipe where I was pulling from `my-other-machine.localdomain:localhost:2222:./Git/some-repo` which was forwarded back (over SSH) to the chromebook itself.
It used to be that you could rationally: `python -m http`, open an "enable port forwarding" thingy in the terminal settings and be able to connect to the service w/o much ceremony. Nowadays they're effectively nanny-ifying the OS and it's getting much harder to do the same thing (removing visible UI for port forwarding, needing hidden settings deep links or `chrome://flags` stuff to be able to access a server/service RUNNING ON YOUR OWN MACHINE FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN NETWORK). Supposedly the cool kids are using tailscale or whatever, but it's literally `localhost<->localhost` and I don't want to have to set up a VPN or whatever to make that work, I just want to doodle on local web services in a VM on a machine that can get stolen and not end up losing all my personal/private files.
Also, ask google AI mode: "when is google phasing out chromebook and chromeos and presumably near-native linux support on their machines?" => """Court documents and executive statements reveal a plan to retire the existing ChromeOS software stack by 2034. This legacy system is expected to be replaced by a unified platform internally codenamed "Project Aluminium," which migrates ChromeOS fully onto the Android tech stack."""
...so ~8 more years of `chromeos`/`linux` and then it'll no longer be the year of linux on the desktop!
Yes, they can be very comfortable and very capable machines, but they're losing a bit of their central spirit and developer-friendliness over time.

by fg137

0 subcomment

Sounds like the author could have used just about any laptop in the world and it would serve him well.
So, what's the point of the article?

by leecommamichael

0 subcomment

Death to liquid glass!

by weezing

0 subcomment

Why would I do that?

by steviedotboston

0 subcomment

I mean I could. I could also do fent. But I don't.

by DeathArrow

0 subcomment

I'll use Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, ReactOS, Haiku, anything but not ChromeOS.

by codeduck

0 subcomment

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
No.

by tristor

0 subcomment

The idea that I could do the things I do regularly on a Chromebook is laughable in the extreme, and I'm not even that much of a crazy power user. No thanks.

by hirvi74

1 subcomments

I love Liquid Glass. I think a lot of the complaints are whiny and pedantic. I do agree a bit of tender love and care could be used to clean up some GUI elements, but people act like Liquid Glass fried their logic board and rendered their machine utterly unusable.

by throwaway613746

0 subcomment

[dead]

by haght

0 subcomment

[dead]

by sermah

1 subcomments

TL;DR: The author traded a full-fledged workstation with “Liquid Glass” for a web browser with a keyboard.

by hilti

4 subcomments

[flagged]