Re: Framework Laptop

Whenever I read a Gemlog entry that I think I might want to reply to, I bookmark it for later.

But I didn’t do anything with the list yet. Let’s do that! Here’s one:

Framework Laptop, one year on

Thanks for the writeup, donut!

Here are my thoughts on repairable laptops.

I’ve never tried anything nonstandard with a laptop; I like desktops, and I guess I heard too many times about laptops being more problematic for running Linux than desktops; I don’t know if that’s still true today.

But I do have a clear favourite laptop type: ChromeOS.

The “premium” Chromebooks have great hardware—keyboards and trackpads as good as anything from Apple.

And the operating system itself is a joy: it’s the lightest weight modern OS I’ve used, by far; it starts up in no time, keeps itself up to date, never goes wrong, and ... that’s it. It’s lower maintenance than Windows or Linux, which is perhaps unsurprising; but it’s also lower maintenance than Android or iOS, which is surprising.

On the flip side, it doesn’t do very much; but it’s great as a thin client, using SSH, Chrome Remote Desktop or other remote access software.

These days you have the option to run Linux in a VM on some models, and that’s how I run Lagrange on my laptop. Then I SSH to my server to write posts. You can also, oddly, run Android apps; this is mostly useful for games.

I’m getting a bit offtopic; the topic was laptops you can repair yourself. There are lots of Chromebooks, and some are good if you’re looking for cheap hardware, but I’m not sure if any are particularly repairable.

I just looked for info on it and was pleasantly surprised to find official guides to repairing, aimed at use in schools:

Get the most out of your Chromebooks

This is great!

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the software side; Chromebooks come with expiration dates:

Auto Update Policy

For example the original Chromebook Pixel released in 2013—one of my favourite devices of all time, because it was the first non-Apple laptop I used which was actually pleasant to use—stopped getting updates in 2018.

I did find some guides to getting around this by flipping the device into developer mode—giving you control over the OS. Unfortunately that just sounds too much like “Linux is hard on laptops”; I want a laptop to Just Work, particularly if I’ll be using it as a thin client.

I like to wrap up my posts cleanly, but I’m afraid there’s no neat conclusion here: Chromebooks look great except for the end of life dates; I don’t have any better suggestion. Sorry!

Afterword One: Gaming Laptop

I do have a Windows gaming laptop, which I bought in order to have a portable VR setup with the HTC Vive that we could play with at work. That was fun: one large backpack, five minute setup time, and we could jump in to Beat Saber and others on our lunch break.

As with other Windows laptops I’ve used, I find the trackpad and keyboard to be pretty horrible—bordering on unusable. I don’t know why this is the case, maybe there are models available that aren’t awful—there are so many choices!—but I don’t want to do anything serious on a Windows laptop anyway so I’ve never bothered to look.

Afterword Two: Chromebox

I’ve mentioned before that I use a Chromebox for work; it’s great: low maintenance, quiet, small, low power, and I can have the screen and keyboard setup I want.

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