> dumb people will care about "selfies" and "email"
You know smart people can prefer a simple, less-modifiable system as well, right? Just because they don't share the HN communities view for an open product doesn't make them less intelligent.
You know smart people can prefer a simple, less-modifiable system as well, right? Just because they don't share the HN communities view for an open product doesn't make them less intelligent.
Contrasted with the largely-locked-down proprietary development of Mac OS, whose few open-source concessions were shuttered a decade ago, the notion of Chrome OS being somehow less legitimately hacker-friendly just seems plainly absurd.
The OS itself is pretty open. If I'm not mistaken though, if you put it into dev mode, you get a scary screen at every reboot, and an opportunity to hit space to re-enable OS verification, and apparently wipe out whatever modifications you've made to the system. In theory, actually rebooting the system should be a fairly rare event, but that's one of the reasons I haven't considered a Chromebook. I understand the security concerns, but if the hardware makes it difficult to do what I'd like, then whatever security they implement is moot anyhow, right?
Macs are basically the opposite; the OS itself is closed, but the hardware isn't difficult to install some other OS on. You've got options, because you aren't wedded to the software.
"Difficult" as in a supported developer mode? Of course there is a way to reverse it otherwise they would have non-stop support calls from people who hit the button to see what it did and freaked out. The whole point of Chromebooks is that you can always get back to a usable state no matter what you do to it (even chuck it out the window, just log-in to a new one and you're 100% up and running).
What I'd like: A Linux distro of my choice that boots as cleanly and directly as the original ChromeOS. A dual-boot to Windows would be nice too, although maybe at this point I could get by with a VM.
What I think a Chromebook would provide: The option for a Crouton install within ChromeOS or a dual-boot. I think that both options require developer mode. During boot, you get a fun little screen telling you to push the spacebar to "re-enable OS verification", which takes you into a system recovery process...or you press ctrl-d to boot the system as-is.
That all sounds like something that I can do, but it sounds like a step back in usability for me. And besides:
> Caution: Modifications you make to the system are not supported by Google, may cause hardware, software or security issues and may void warranty.
(http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo...)
That's a terrible way to prefix a guide for activating a "supported developer mode" :-)
A Chromebook may be wonderful for someone else with different desires. I don't think that it's a good fit for what I want to do.
[1] - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eGPMu03vCxIO0a3oNX8H...
If I was looking for a weekend project and a cheap machine at the moment, it might be fun to do. It also brings back memories of compiling new drivers to get some hardware working, haha. Likely, I could find similar hardware that doesn't take as much effort to get working the way I'd like.
Thank you for the link.