Probably a lot faster, in terms of cpu and ability to render resource intensive webpages inside firefox v65. But this was also $40 four years ago.

Having a normal xubuntu environment does give an advantage of being able to install a much wider variety of software compared to the chromebook OS, unless we're talking about replacing the chromebook OS with debian + xorg + your choice of desktop environment.

My Samsung Chromebook 3 is a pretty poor performer, but I love the matte screen and battery life. I use Termux all day long with Typescript background-compiling.

I wouldn't run Xcode on a non-SSD MBP, though.