All Linux Things

Recently picked up one of these from a local store returns dept. $275 seemed to be a good price. Its the i3 8gb 128gb 14" 1920x1080 version supported to 2029

Very nice alloy outer shell and feels premium.

This is my first foray into the world of Chromebook. Triggered by the need for something light for projecting /on screen editing of photos with our local photo group. I've been lugging laptops around for a number of years but needed something lighter.

The onboard linux support - Debian Bullseye - is not bad but running some stuff under wine is a nightmare. Still working on that!

Nevertheless so far I'm impressed on its own. Driving output HDMI to a 1920x1080 monitor doesn't give quite the quality of display I expected. It always seems a little out of focus/in need of font adjustment/refresh rate not quite right sort of thing.

Early days...

I have the 314 14In with 8gb and 128gb 1920x1080 as I bought it refurbished, essentially an open box item for $225 last year. I havent tried the Linux support but use the Android support quite a bit. Fantastic system for portable personal use. I take it with me a lot of the time. If you have an HDMI port on the Chromebook your display output should look fine but if your using an adapter to HDMI its going to be fuzzy looking. My Chromebox I tried to use a HDMI to VGA adapter and its was fuzzy looking on the display. Completely changed once I went to HDMI to HDMI.

I am not at all familiar with Chrome OS. How does it do as a graphics platform? I had an Android tablet with stylus support which made it decent for sketching and it worked fine for cropping, converting and resizing. Any color work was something of a best guess. Do you work with Chrome apps for graphics or do you use Debian apps? Light weight and portable does have its allure. I had a Yoga Tab 3(?) that had a built in projector, which was so handy. You could make a sketch, then project it onto a wall and paint and time make it into a mural, well sort of its projections were limited to about a meter and a half.

So far I'm still working on which apps to use. The big downside is that many of the Android apps such as Snapseed, Lightroom etc are all designed for Phone use and do not always sit well on a Chromebook. Web based stuff is fine - so Pixlr is good - but in that case GIMP should be fine as well though I haven't got that far yet. Gthumb works fine as does XnViewMP for general photo stuff. Haven't got round to trying Darktable - my main go to - yet.
One of the big downsides with linux apps is the power consumption goes through the roof. Picasa still works fine in wine - once you sort out how to run it which is not as simple as in linux.

My needs werent real specific but I found the office apps in particular on the Android side to be very nice. I use my Chromebook for general entertainment and personal use. I interested to see how it goes for you as I look to my future tech choices.