Table of Contents
The TLDR Version
Introduction
The SOLID Principles
Security
Ownership Cost
Leverage Native Capabilities
Inherent R...
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Peter,
With respect to the 4 points you brought up regarding dev-mode:
o you can re-enable verified boot, while still remaining in dev-mode. Its a single command.
o you can set a linux password for the user 'chronos'. Again, its a single command. This takes care of the open vt-2 (you need to give the chronos password) and the open sudo access to root (again, you have to now give the chronos password)
Hope the above doesn't come across as 'snarky' - thats not the intention.
Thing is, dev-mode chrome os can be close to a fully fledged linux distro - if that is your want. It even has a native pkg manager (chromebrew) to install the missing bits (gcc, tcl, ruby, python, tmux etc). The only thing that really gets in the way is the non standard display server (google's sommelier can help to partly overcome this - installable via chromebrew if you wish).
The only real warning against dev-mode ought to be - "if you're not especially comfortable on linux boxen, don't do it"
Not that its "insecure". It really isn't, once you set it up correctly (again, thats only 2 commands). The real insecurity comes down to what stuff you then go on to install and run on your machine.
And thats true of any system, once you have control over it.
Hi Imran,
Thank you for the feedback.
I was aware that you can set a password for
chronosuser, but I was not aware that you can re-enable Verified Boot. Do you have a link to this you can share? Did a quick search for "enable verified boot in dev mode", but didn't find any relevant articles.crossystemis your swiss army toolbox for interacting with the boot-time features of chrome os.The specific knob to tweak here is:
With crossystem, you can also turn legacy boot (the open "legacy" bios bootloader, accesed by ctrl-l at boottime) off, and usb boot (ctrl-u, used to boot chrome or chromium os usb installs) off.
(of course, you only do that if you have no interest in dual booting. The user has the power to decide - as it should be)
Once you have that, your dev-mode chromebook can ONLY boot the google supplied chrome os kernel, and it will verify the checksum on the kernel partition, just to make sure.
See? Dev-mode AND security. In only 2 commands (including setting the password).
(I've never figured out how such an easy-to-lockdown system gets so many articles posted on it - all warning how insecure it is and "don't do it".)
FYI here's how to toggle USB and legacy boot:
chromium.org/chromium-os/developer...
Both should be already disabled by default.
Can you share the command? All the top google results give steps for re-enabling verified boot by turning off dev mode (i.e. by pressing space at boot and wiping user data).
Carl, it's provided in a reply here.
Having said that, I haven't been using ChromeOS devices for several years now, so do it at your own risk.
Also, there is more detailed information about this in the crouton project's wiki here and here.
TL;DR:
The command to do this is:
Hello Peter,
I am just starting with Linux on the chromebook and found your post quite useful.
What is not really clear to me is how you install command-line apps.
I started with Google: Set up Linux (Beta) on the Chromebook
This part worked fine
But when I started to install other apps, I found that everything was outdated (gradle) or not available (fd-find, ripgrep, ...).
Any insights on this?
Thanks for this article. I have been looking at Chromebooks lately because I really love the simplicity of them. (I dislike Windows) I am fine with most of my work living in the cloud as long as it's secure. The only concern I have is the text-editors currently available. I am glad you agree that the Chrome OS shouldn't be hacked. I'd be afraid to do that. Saw one at Walmart today, a lovely Acer Chromebook 15.6 which someone had tried to put into Developer Mode. Sad. However, I did watch this Chrome Developer Demo by Google. They show running Linux in container on Chrome OS (no real hacking required)and actually run VS Code in a Linux container. Here's the link for that in case you are interested.
Yeah, ChromeOS support for Linux apps has been a great feature for developers.
I don't think all Chromebooks get access to this feature, so I would check and be sure that this feature is available on that Chromebook before you commit to it.
I am looking into that. Lists, lists everywhere...which ones can I trust? Is there a way to check with Google?
There is no official list that I am aware of, but I'm not sure if you have come across this or not: xda-developers.com/chromebooks-lin...
Not having password-less ssh really a bummer. I'm considering chromebook as I've been doing remote dev on EC2 instances for many years already, and the workflow you described here is no alien to me. My current macbook air just a gateway to real development machine where I just need browser and iterm most of the time.
Searching around however I found this where it possible to use ssh key with Secure Shell, where the key has to be generated on other machine.
jonmccune.wordpress.com/2017/07/09...
How does VNC over http fare on Chromebook?
I am on the fence to buy a Chromebook. While SSH to remote server seems doable to do some scripting and administration tasks.
I am wondering if vnc is functional as a last resort GUI access to remote development station.
I gotta point out you can always use a cloud IDE (Code anywhere, Cloud9, codesandbox, stackblitz) to get things going without installing anything. I used Cloud9 for an entire project and the entire experience was great. Being able to jump directly from my under-powered chromebook (200$ model) to a full fledged desktop without skipping a beat was pretty cool, and beats working in a shell.
Unfortunately Cloud9 no longer has a free tier since getting bought out by Amazon. The IDE wasn't that powerful though, it was probably on par with Sublime with a lot of syntax highlighting, but any advanced refactoring was out of the picture. Plus, the free tier was comparable to a raspberrypi in horsepower. (my project was a very minimal web app)
I've heard good things about codeanywhere and codesandbox, but limited experience with both, but same idea applies.
These sorts of IDE options are probably the most minimal (0 installation), but are probably the most limited in scope. For the right people, its probably enough, especially for even the lower end chromebooks. :D
For anybody reading this in 2021, Termux has deprecated the Play Store version of the app, and now they say to install from the F-Droid app store. Unfortunately, on ChromeOS in order to sideload F-Droid you need to enable dev mode, defeating the benefit of Termux.
You can keep using the old version of Termux from the Play Store, but it won't get updates; you'll get messages about the pkg download mirrors being offline (which is easy to workaround). But who knows what breaks next?
This is great. I'm really interested in how much can be done locally on a Chromebook. Do you find that the reliance on a remote server can be difficult, particularly if your Internet connection isn't good/available?
Personally, I have not found reliance on remote servers to be too difficult.
When I run into slow/flaky wireless connections, I tether to my mobile/cellular network and I’m good to go.
I haven’t encountered a scenario when I was unexpectedly completely offline.
When I know I will be completely offline (eg plane), I pull my projects down locally and I’m good to go.
The only complaint I have about local development work is that Termux (android terminal emulator) has a few quirks, like no
/etc/shells, or that root Linux directory is$PREFIX, or that#!/usr/bin/env ...doesn’t work, or that to paste you have to ctrl alt v ...etcHas anyone tried using Android Studio 3.5 (which is supposed to be officially supported) or IntelliJ IDEA community edition on the chromebook?
Would you recommend it?
I'm about to give programming workshop for beginners and it would be great if chromebook were really usable
aboutchromebooks.com/news/android-...
medium.com/@budding.technologist/u...
Came on this article while researching future dev tools with Chromebooks. Bought my wife (pretty non-techie) a very sweet Asus Flip C304 for Christmas and now I'm jealous. I'm eventually replacing a Lenovo laptop (and my company-provided Mac Air) for my dev work with something portable, so I needed some experienced analysis from someone who has done this. This post has been more than helpful.
Cheers.
Great article! I'm pretty jazzed about the upcoming Crostini/Linux containers-in-Chrome project. Hopefully that'll open up some doors for dev work.
Good call out. I should edit to add that section.
I tried Crostini when it came out in Dev Channel in v66. It was prohibitively lacking in 2 ways:
as far as I understand you suggest to use docker. How do you install it locally given that it does not support chrome?
I don't install docker locally. Instead, I install docker on the server that I SSH into via Chrome's SecureShell extension.
Having said that, starting in Chrome v68 or v69, you're able to run Docker locally on Chromebooks via Crostini VMs. Basically, you would run a command in Crosh shell which creates a minimal VM that you have full shell access on (instead of the limited Crosh shell) and Docker already installed on it. From there, you can have the local dev experience you're more used to.
Fair warning, however:
I have tried experimenting with that local development set-up on a Chromebook and it was a very poor experience for me. Chromebooks are very resource-limited devices (4GB RAM, intel m3, 64GB SSD). They're really not tailored or well-suited for local development. Running a Chrome browser with a few tabs + Spotify android app + a VM with neovim and a docker container was enough to feel sluggish. Albeit, this feature is still relatively new and the Chromium team continues to work on stabilizing and improving this.
An expression comes to mind that sums it up nicely: "Just because you can doesn't mean you should"
Can we install local python on Chromebook ?
(What about go and elixir)
You have mentioned VIM - it is local or on remote server ?
(If local - is there a local emacs ?)
Hi Mandar,
Yes, you can install things locally if your Chromebook supports Android apps. You can install Termux (an Android-based terminal emulator) and install programming languages of your choice. I have successfully installed Go, Ruby, Python, Node.js in the past. I haven't tried installing Elixir, so I can't say, but a quick search yielded some results like this one.
As for your second question, you can install a number of editors locally if you follow the previous method (Termux Android app). Although, in my article, I was focusing more on remote development environments/setups.
Hope this answers your questions.
chromebrew seems to have emacs, python, elixir (and other languages, as well as neovim)
I assume these are different from Android Apps/Termux ?
Have you tried chromebrew ? if yes, what was your experience ?
I have not tried Chromebrew because it required putting the Chromebook in Dev Mode, which I was avoiding entirely.