Chromebook

[The Old Man]

Fed up with Windows. Thinking of an Acer Chromebook. Using Sheets, surfing the Internet, email. Any comments, suggestions. Positive and negative.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

Fed up with Windows. Thinking of an Acer Chromebook. Using Sheets, surfing the Internet, email. Any comments, suggestions. Positive and negative.

Have you thought about Linux Mint,? an excellent OS with no BS Privacy respecting and a great community behind it. Also has the added advantage of probably being able to run on the hardware you already have running Windows (always best to check that, and best to install Mint over Windows so it completely wipes Windows from the machine) oh and it's completely free!

[Dazrin]

I have an Acer Spin 713 (2019 or 20 model?) that has worked well for me for basically those same uses. I use Sheets a lot. The 16:10 screen is really nice to have and something I will always try to have, I always seem to need more vertical space rather than horizontal space.

In my case, I probably wouldn't get the Spin version again unless the cost is the same since I don't really need the tablet / touchscreen features. YMMV on that, it just didn't work out the way we were hoping.

[Sirtel]

For myself, I would never use a Chromebook (or Linux). I use a lot of desktop programs and not all of them run on Linux. OTOH, I know several people who almost never use any desktop programs on their home computers - for them a Chromebook would be a good option.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

Fed up with Windows. Thinking of an Acer Chromebook. Using Sheets, surfing the Internet, email. Any comments, suggestions. Positive and negative.

Would probably work for your purposes.

Just bear in mind that your Chromebook has a much shorter lifespan than your average laptop running Windows/Mac/Linux. Other consumer laptops are usually guaranteed about ten years of OS updates, BIOS updates, etc. And even if your laptop is running Windows 10 and suddenly goes EOL next year because they want you to upgrade to Windows 11, the device is still very much usable, especially if you then decide to blow Windows away and install Linux on it or something.

By contrast, Chromebooks are basically only useful as long as Google is still delivering updates to the device. Once they decide the Chromebook is EOL and no longer getting Chrome updates, it may still work, but it borders on "unsafe" to use for anything sensitive because it's no longer getting security updates.

Also, at that point, it's quite a bit more difficult to "blow away" ChromeOS and load something else. I managed to do it on my original Chromebook Pixel (god I loved that thing--pretty much everything except the battery life was just amazing), but it required physically removing a write-protect screw on the motherboard. Had Linux Mint running on it for awhile, then gave it to my wife as a backup machine, and it's been sitting in a drawer ever since.

[The Old Man]

Originally Posted by Graham44

Have you thought about Linux Mint,? an excellent OS with no BS Privacy respecting and a great community behind it. Also has the added advantage of probably being able to run on the hardware you already have running Windows (always best to check that, and best to install Mint over Windows so it completely wipes Windows from the machine) oh and it's completely free!

To be honest, Linux scares me. I went to the Mint site and and thought about drivers for my printer, monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. I have an old Windows 10 desktop so I suppose I could try it on that

I see there is no Calibre app for Android

[The Old Man]

I see the Acer I’m considering is OS good till 2033. I’m 93 so no problem.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

I see there is no Calibre app for Android

No. Calibre won't run on a Chromebook (unless you use Linux on it).

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Would probably work for your purposes.

Just bear in mind that your Chromebook has a much shorter lifespan than your average laptop running Windows/Mac/Linux.

I think that is old information, all Chromebooks are supposed to have at least 10 years of updates: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/.../6220366?hl=en

Even (some) older ones were given that feature but you may need to opt into it.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

To be honest, Linux scares me. I went to the Mint site and and thought about drivers for my printer, monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. I have an old Windows 10 desktop so I suppose I could try it on that

I see there is no Calibre app for Android

Remember that your original requirements were "Using Sheets, surfing the Internet, email." Don't try to find a unicorn for all of your edge cases. Unless Calibre is a hard requirement for you, keep the old Win 10 desktop around as an interim solution, maybe just for running Calibre, until you can find some other solution. Chromebooks have pretty small internal hard drives, too, so even if you managed to install Linux on it and get Calibre running, you might run into disk space limitations with your library.

Originally Posted by Dazrin

I think that is old information, all Chromebooks are supposed to have at least 10 years of updates: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/.../6220366?hl=en

Even (some) older ones were given that feature but you may need to opt into it.

Mmm, perhaps Google changed their tune after some very public backlash from school administrators that went all-in on Chromebooks for education and found their entire fleet of chromebooks reduced to paperweights after five years.

[Quoth]

Be careful which you buy:
The ARM versions have better battery life and Android support but poorer for Crostini (built in Linux in a container on a Virtual Machine).
The Google ChromeOS apps are very poor compared to Linux or Windows apps and very few.

I wiped mine (an x86-64) and installed native Linux Mint. About x2 faster and less grief. You can install an Android emultator / VM on Linux and that's all ChromeOS is doing. It was rubbish for Android.

I use the built in 64G chip for the OS and all my user files are on a 512G micro SD card (formatted ext4), and works well with Calibre and 9000 ebooks/PDFs. The Google supplied Crostini Linux is crippled by having Chrome Browser provide a desktop via "Wayland" and having all connected USB and SD storage mounted as 9P filesystems. A bad experience for Calibre, Libra Office etc.

ChromeOS / Chromebook is for a laptop format Chrome Browser and a few badly running Android Apps (none of my important ones other than Viber worked, and it was buggy compared to Viber on Linux. Alternate browsers to Chrome only available either as Android or Linux versions.

Repurposing an x86-64 Chromebook for Native Linux isn't for the faint hearted, but far better.

They are also built down to a price so many have poor screens. If you need real programs then get a cheap €400 laptop for Linux Mint, or install it on existing computer.

Also T&C of ChromeOS is that Google is in control.

Cbromebooks and ChromeOS are much better than it was, but unless you only use the Google apps, forget it. No local user account either. Can only disable updates (which randomly kill features) by claiming WiFi is metered. Too many tools are actually Chrome Browser Extensions. The entire desktop is actually provided by Chrome Browser, which is spyware.

No sane backup system.

Though it runs on Linux, you have no access to that. Layers of Vms & containers and a separate crippled Linux implementation in a container on a VM for the user. Switching to full developer mode wipes everything. A restore of ChromeOS backup wipes everything except ChromeOS.

[Quoth]

I've almost never had to install drivers for anything on Linux Mint in 10 years. I do replace the automatically installed by Linux drivers for my networked Brother colour laser / scanner from the Brother website.

[Brianrh]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

No. Calibre won't run on a Chromebook (unless you use Linux on it).

I have an Asus Chromebook which uses an Intel microprocessor and it can run Linux. The Linux runs in a "container" which, as I understand it is a sandboxed enviroment alongside the normal OS. I can run Calibre with plugins, i can import ebooks as files and convert them and export them as files.

However you can't connect to the outside world using USB so you can't load ebooks on ereaders directly from Calibre. You can obviously load ebooks on a Kindle using the Send to Kindle website from the Chromebook OS.

I'm sure I read that the Chromebook has to have an Intel microprocessor to do this.

[PeterT]

I've been exclusively using a Chromebook for the last year while deliberating on what to get as far as a desktop/laptop goes (and when lol), and quite happily use calibre on it.

Yes there are some challenges related to how ChromeOS shares USB connected devices between the native ChromeOS environment and the emulated Linux subsystem (aka Linux development environment, or crostini), but the majority of those were resolved with a recent calibre change allowing the mount of a folder to specify an eReader type (in my case a Kobo).

I've happily run calibre from the official Linux downloads at version from 5.44 to 8.04. No issues with plugins including DeACSM, DEDRM and OverDrive Libby. Also no issues with either the built in Calibre WEB server or the wireless device driver.

Sure there are always a few idiosyncrasies but I'm happy with it.

[Brianrh]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I but the majority of those were resolved with a recent calibre change allowing the mount of a folder to specify an eReader type (in my case a Kobo).

It looks just what I need but I don't understand what it means. I manage to use Linux, to a limited extent, on my Chromebook but I don't always know what I'm doing.

Please can you explain what this means in layman's terms.

Many thanks.