As you can read on the screen capture above I’ve got a Debian 12.6 VM running under crosvm (Chrome OS VM). What’s very interesting is that the Linux kernel is 6.6.30, but Debian 12.6 is supposedly released with Linux kernel 6.1. I suspect that the kernel in my version of Debian is 6.6 because that’s the version running on my Chromebook. And that’s another surprise, because the version of the Linux kernel underpinning Android is 4-dot-something, or maybe 5-dot-something with the latest Android release. But it damn sure isn’t the same version as the kernel in Chrome OS.

The Linux purists will look askance at what Google has done with Linux to make it work in a Chromebook and refuse to concede that this Chromebook is indeed a Linux success. I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of Chromebooks have been built and sold since Chromebooks first started shipping in June 2011, but the only personal computer with a Linux kernel that has shipped more has been Android, which can be counted in the billions. This is yet another example of the overwhelming power of open source. But I digress…

This little machine keeps ticking along. It has ten years of support, which means I can depend on updates out to at least 2030, six years from now. As I noted in my last post, I should live so long. This little machine is so flexible, capable of satisfying all-around needs such as writing and web surfing for most folks, to tinkering with a Linux shell for tinkerers like me. The only thing it won’t do is play a AAA game that demands a multiple-thousand dollar rig capable of consuming enough power to keep a middle-class home powered and lit up. And I don’t care.

What I am waiting on with considerable trepidation is if I’ll get any of that Google AI goop that Chrome Plus Chromebooks are now supposed to support in the coming months and years. Frankly I dread the slathering of this AI bullshit all over everything, and I’m now looking for ways to beat it back and keep it from gumming up the works on everything I own and use. *sigh*

Google Chrome uses the Blink browser engine. So do other browsers, including but not limited to, Microsoft’s Edge, Vivaldi, Brave, and Opera. I’ve been an almost exclusive user of Vivaldi on macOS, Linux and Windows (while I ran Windows), falling back to Safari (macOS) and Chrome when I needed to check an odd behavior. One browser that does not use Blink, but that I’ve avoided for some time now, has been Firefox. I’ve avoided Firefox because of UI changes it’s made that, to be honest, annoyed the crap out of me. The worst UI change, in my opinion, was from tabs to buttons across the top of the browser. Apple tried this design idea with a beta version of Safari, but got so much grief over that change that they put regular tabs back, and put a toggle in the browser settings page to select that “advanced” feature if that’s what you wanted.

I’m back to considering Firefox because I can no longer trust what will happen to Blink, and by its association, to Vivaldi in particular. I feel Vivaldi is excellent, but if they continue to use Blink (and honestly they couldn’t switch if they wanted to) then I really don’t want to use Vivaldi. That’s why I’m beginning to move back to Firefox on Linux Mint, starting with fixing the one UI feature I can’t stand — new-style button tabs.

There’s a link at the bottom to a question asked about how to fix the button tab issue, followed by a number of answers. I’m going to paraphrase that answer and show what solution I settled on. Here are the steps I took, and what it looked like along the way on my end.

• Open about:config
• Search for toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
• Double-click the value to set it to true

• Open about:support
• Search for Profile Directory
• Click Open Directory

Opening the path shown will put you immediately into the profile directory. In that directory create a folder called chrome, and then navigate into chrome. Inside the chrome folder create a new file called userChrome.css

Open the empty file, and then copy and paste the following:

.tab-background {  border-radius: var(--tab-border-radius) var(--tab-border-radius) 0 0 !important;  margin-top: 1px !important;  margin-bottom: 0 !important;  padding-bottom: 31px !important;}.tabbrowser-tab[multiselected=true]:not([selected=true]) .tab-background {  border-radius: var(--tab-border-radius) !important;  margin-top: 2px !important;  margin-bottom: 1px !important;  padding-bottom: 29px !important;}.tabbrowser-tab[selected=true] .tab-background ,.tabbrowser-tab[multiselected=true] .tab-background {  background-color: var(--toolbar-bgcolor) !important;  background-image: var(--toolbar-bgimage) !important;}

Save what you just pasted into userChrome.css, then exit and restart Firefox. You’ll then have normal tabs back.

You might well ask yourself why must I go to this much trouble? I don’t have a definitive answer for you, but I can imagine that a singular developer decided to do it this way, and they were in their own little echo chamber/bubble that reinforced that decision. As I wrote earlier Apple tried this and got soundly beaten back, to the point that Safari was released with Plain Old Tabs. But at least you have an ability to actually fix the Firefox tabs issue.

It’s surprising how much better I like Firefox with this one change. Believe it or not I now feel comfortable leaving all other browsers and moving back into using Firefox.

Links

• Inc — Google Is Putting an End to Ad-Blocking in Chrome: Here Are the 5 Best Browser Alternatives — https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/google-is-putting-an-end-to-ad-blocking-in-chrome-here-are-5-best-browser-alternatives.html
• Daring Fireball — The Tragedy of Safari 15 for Mac’s ‘Tabs’ — https://daringfireball.net/2021/10/the_tragedy_of_safari_15_quote_unquote_tabs
• Chromium repo — Blink browser engine — https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/third_party/blink/
• superuser — How to switch back to Firefox’ old style of tabs? — https://superuser.com/questions/1653533/how-to-switch-back-to-firefox-old-style-of-tabs

As you can see in the screenshot above, the Tab S6 Lite is now running Android 13 and Samsung’s One UI 5. Normally I don’t care for Samsung’s UI, but when it comes to the Settings panel, I’m shocked to say that Samsung’s is better organized, and as a consequence, easier to go find settings for the tablet. Who would have known???

The problem is with Google’s Chrome browser. Specifically that it will NOT block ads of any type. And I looked into Chrome’s setup; no ad blocking. Here’s an example of the crap I kept getting wherever I browsed with Chrome.

I don’t normally go slumming onto Slashdot, for many reasons, not the least is how the site is plastered with ads. It was Slashdot that motivated me to install an ad blocker on my PC Chrome years and years ago. This was a throwback to an earlier day I didn’t appreciate. Now let’s visit Slashdot with Vivaldi.

You’ll note the Vivaldi view has blocked quite a few ads on the Slashdot site, especially in the right side gutter. Ad blocking in Vivaldi makes the Slashdot site barely tolerable, as long as I stay out of the comments.

Let’s look at ArsTechnica in Chrome.

ArsTechnica stories have a large ad at the top of each page, at least one in the middle, and one at the footer. The header ad has two strikes against it, the first being so damn large and the second that it’s Bono, and I do not like Bono at all. And there’s a bit of irony that there’s ads all over a story about the sin of Microsoft Store ads.

There is one key feature in Vivaldi missing in Chrome, it’s Settings | Tracker and Ad Blocker, Block Trackers and Ads. With that radio button selected all this crap is pretty much blocked and my webpages are very clean. Before I close this post, here are two more examples of before with Chrome, and after with Vivaldi.

I guess if I were still a teenager instead of a sexagenarian I’d find the ad full of buxom blondes and brunettes enticing. But at my age it’s called being a dirty old man, or worse. Besides, they look younger than my adult children, so that’s how I see them, as a bunch of kids. And that ad is the least annoying on that page. Other ads try to tell me about toe fungus, or the best way to clean out my bowels every day, and how wonderful Bitcoin is… You see my point. I do find useful text on many sites, but todays ads plastered everywhere are absolute shit, and they’re only getting worse. To help me control what I don’t want to see I run Vivaldi on Android. Before the question is raised, Chrome’s plugin store won’t support Android Chrome; it’s unsupported, so I can’t install an ad-blocker plugin.

Get Vivaldi, or perhaps Brave, or any other browser that inherently blocks ads. Don’t run with Chrome.

Some will criticize that a Chromebook is only useful when connected to the internet, to which I reply that that may have been legitimate a decade or so ago when the Chromebooks were new, but not now.

Firstly is the hardware environment compared to the price. This Chromebook is equipped with an Intel Core i3-1115G4 running with four cores at 3 MHz. It has 8 GB of memory and a 128 GB SSD. I can’t recall the type of screen, but it doesn’t matter, as the screen is bright and clear. The keyboard is full sized and backlit for those times you want to write in the dark. All of this can now be purchased for around $400.

Secondly, this Chromebook (and others, such as my wife’s HP) now come equipped to run Linux as a virtualized environment, complete with a bash shell to work in. The Linux version available is Debian 11/bullseye. It comes complete with GCC/G++, make, and Python. If I want additional tools installed there’s apt. I did install Visual Studio Code and a few plugins. You can even install and develop with Rust, if that’s your thing. In other words, I have a complete development environment that gives me at least 90% of the functionality of my Macs and my desktop Linux system. And all of this with the portable convenience of a lightweight Chromebook.

Thirdly, there’s the convenience of Google Docs. If I need to write a formal document, or work with a complex spreadsheet, if my Chromebook is networked then I can open up those types of documents and just work.

As for network connectivity, I have the ability to pair my Chromebook with my iPhone acting as a personal hotspot for my Chromebook. I have a wireless plan that has unlimited data, which is quite cheap these days.

And for those who keep clamoring for the Year of the Linux Desktop, well, guess what. A Chromebook is Linux, and if I minimize the Chrome browser, I get a desktop, just as if I’d installed a distribution on a bare machine. The “value proposition” of a Chromebook is far better than any Windows notebook, and that value is due in no small part to Linux as the foundation OS on the Chromebook.

I’m way past the point where I want to buy the most expensive and thus the fastest computer hardware. When a GPU board, such as nVidia’s RTX 4090, retails for an eye-watering $1,600, that’s when I realize I’m not the target demographic for this hardware. And that’s before you’re ready to drop thousands more on the last AMD or Intel processor and supporting system. The pricing of high-end computers has reached the level of high-end cameras, meaning more expensive than I can possibly afford, let alone justify.

I can justify, and thus budget, for a good quality Chromebook. After over a year of usage, this little machine keeps on ticking along, and I couldn’t be happier. The tools, and the OS, are transparent to me. I can just open it up and get my work done. And before the nervous Nellies start nattering on about Google/Alphabet’s so-called surveillance via the Chrome browser, I don’t care. If you’re that concerned and paranoid, then you’re the perfect customer for Linux installed on a notebook, but using Firefox instead of Chrome.

Oh. One other nice feature. All my critical documents and data are up in my Google account. This allows me to move from Chromebook to Chromebook. Meaning that if I somehow destroy my current machine, I can buy another device, log in, and pick right back up where I started. It’s not a pure “cloud” experience, but there’s enough that I can recover quickly in case of a disaster.

For me a Chromebook is the Mary Poppins of personal computers, being practically perfect in every way.

You can indeed install Android Studio (Chipmunk, 2021.2.1) and then run the IDE and actually open a project in it, and have that project build and run inside the IDE. As I wrote earlier I checked this tutorial project I’d built into GitHub. On this Chromebook I checked it out and loaded it into the  local Android Studio running on the Chromebook. I had to make a few changes with regards to Java and Gradle because everything is running inside the Chromebook’s Chrostini Linux container. Once that was sorted the project built and I could see the project preview on the far right. I have not tried to kick off a virtual Android device, and frankly, I’m afraid to. Perhaps I should plug in one of my Android handsets I use for testing into the Chromebook’s USB-C port and give that a go. But I have a bigger decision to make.

Should I even try? Loading the project wasn’t a problem. Building it was. It takes a very long time to build this project on my Chromebook, far longer than on my low-end Minus Forum UM250 development box. Developing on the UM250 is reasonable, the Chromebook pushes my patience a bit. Unfortunately if all you have is a Chromebook like this Lenovo, then you go with what you have. I do say that simpler development with Visual Studio Code and Rust or Python is a far better experience than developing with Android Studio.

Having said that, I admit to be very impressed that it all worked as it should on the Chromebook. That speaks to the high quality of Android Studio and Chrome OS itself. For a beginning developer or a developer on a budget, you can get a tremendous amount done with a Lenovo if properly configured up front (Intel i3, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD storage). For highschool STEM students or undergraduate college students (freshman and sophomore) it’s a great deal. And a Chromebook has all the other tools built-in for doing all the work required of students (writing papers, for example).

Another observation about working on a Chromebook with this Android Studio project is that two project files have been modified; .idea/gradle.xml and .idea/misc.xml. These were changed when I configured the project to work on the Chromebook. Do I check those files into main on GitHub, or do I create a branch for working on ChromeOS and then check them into that branch? Do I even want to bother? Since this was meant to be a proof-of-concept exercise, I’ll need to give that some more thought.

Because I couldn’t update my existing Debian 10 container to Debian 11, I deleted my existing Debian 10 container. In the process I also removed all folders that showed up in the files application under Linux folders, and as to be expected all installed applications such as Visual Studio Code. It would later turn out that I could create another Debian container, which is a topic for a later post. Re-creating my first Debian 11 container allowed me to document the steps necessary to add additional software development tools to the container.

Once the container was installed I updated Debian 11 with sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y to make sure the software was fully up-to-date. For those reading this post you’ll find a tremendous amount of older documentation where apt-get is used. The newer form just uses apt, and so can you, saving some typing. The older form is still aliased so copying and pasting instructions into a shell will still work, everything else being equal.

Once the update was finished I attempted to install htop (sudo apt install htop -y) and Visual Studio Code. In order to install Visual Studio Code you need to go to the Microsoft website and download the x86-64 Debian file (see https://code.visualstudio.com/download ). You’ll save the .deb file somewhere in your container’s home directory, and then install it with sudo dpkg -i code_1.66.2-1649664567_amd64.deb where you saved the file.

The problem with this is you’re going to get an error message from apt telling you that there are unmet dependencies for both packages. The error message will even tell you how to fix the problem. To meet those dependencies you’ll need to execute sudo apt --fix-broken install at the command line. I would recommend that if you want both, install both even though they’ll both fail, so that when you fix the broken install both of them will be fixed and installed. One last install is for Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code will throw a keyring error. To keep this from happening install gnome keyring: sudo apt install gnome-keyring.

While we’re installing applications, I would recommend you go ahead and install the utility tree as it’s not part of the base install. Read the man page for tree or check this online example: https://www.computerhope.com/unix/tree.htm .

Once all that is installed, you need to decide what languages you’ll develop for. Debian 11 comes with a reasonably current version of Python, version 3.9.4. So if all you want to do is Python development you can stop there. If you want to develop for another language you can install those as well. For example, I wanted to do Rust development, so I installed Rust in the container following the Rust installation instructions here: https://www.rust-lang.org/learn/get-started . To support Rust development you’ll also need to install gcc because Rust uses the local environment’s linker cc, which is a part of gcc: sudo apt install gcc. If you do install gcc you get the side benefit of being able to develop in C. If you want to develop in C++ then you’ll also need to install g++ (sudo apt install g++ -y) and make (sudo apt install make). The tool git is already installed, so if you want to keep your work up on GitHub for example (which I strongly advise) you can do so out-of-the-box.

With everything installed, including a small repo, the total footprint of everything is a little over 4GiB. And I set up my container with a 40GiB disk area, which is probably too much considering what you might do. Since I’m not going to be compiling a Linux kernel, that’s quite enough elbow room to do non-trival work.

Once you’ve install Visual Studio Code you can start it from the Chromebook desktop by hitting the search key on the keyboard (that’s the key on the left above shift with the magnifying glass glyph). It should look something like this:

The icon for Visual Studio Code in my example showed up in the upper left corner. Once you start it by clicking on it, it will show up on your shelf. You can then double-finger click on it to pin it to your shelf for even easier access. My shelf runs vertically on the far left.

I’ve already gone to the trouble to install VS Code plugins for Python and Rust. I won’t go into that because there’s lots of detailed online help if you need that. Suffice to say that the instructions work, even on a Chromebook. In my example I’m beginning to do some Rust development.

Rust will compile and execute either at the command line or within VS Code. I’m sure there are limitations to very large projects, but for quite a bit of work there is more than enough resources to work on this Chromebook.

Why would I push a Chromebook instead of a MacBook or Windows notebook? Cost. The best bang-for-the-buck development environment believe it or not is going to be a Chromebook. A Windows notebook might reach down to what a Chromebook costs, but my reason for avoiding Windows is how Microsoft is trying to turn Windows users into another revanue source with intrusive ads and the limitations against third party applications that is creaping deeper into the OS, especially Windows 11. If you’re an independent developer a Chromebook is the best all-around compromise, especially in these times of high costs for basics and increasing inflation. You can still spend upwards of $400 on a Chromebook such as this Lenovo, but there are all sorts of interesting offers at half that amount, and who knows what you can find used.

A Chromebook like this is even a better deal than say a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GiB or 8GiB, because you still need a keyboard, mouse and screen. And I do know all about the Raspberry Pi 400. But you can’t fold up a Raspberry Pi 400 or your Raspberry Pi rig and carry it out with you. Portability isn’t the Raspberry Pi’s forte.

Figure 1 shows what my Chrome flags are set to. The critical flag is “Debian version for new Crostini containers.” Mine is deliberately set by me to Bullseye, or Debian 11. If it’s left to Default then it will be Debian 10. I took a second Lenovo Chromebook I have, set that flag, deleted the existing Debian 10 container, and then created a new container. Sure enough when I opened the container’s terminal and checked I was running Debian 11.

Right after this I updated Debian 11 to make sure I had all the latest software. Rather than wipe and reload on my primary Chromebook, I’m going to turn on another flag, “Allow multiple Chrostini containers,” and create a second container running Debian 11. If that works then I’ll try to “migrate” from my existing Debian 10 container over to my new Debian 11 container, then delete the Debian 10 container. Or maybe just keep both. I don’t know at this point.

For the future, at least for me, I’ll set the container Debian version explicitly up to the highest level allowed before I create a Debian Linux container.

Update 3 May

I went looking for a way to create a second Debian Linux container and couldn’t find anything. So I guess I won’t be doing that. That leaves the re-create the container method as the only viable method to date.

The Lenovo provides the ability to run Debian Linux inside a VM on the Chromebook. Debian is presented as a standard bash shell with no graphical applications. After all, the GUI is provided by ChomeOS and the Chrome browser. The Linux VM is running Debian 10/buster, which you can check by just typing cat /etc/os-release at the command line.

For a Chromebook, that’s perfectly acceptable. But I discovered through my readings on the internets that there’s a new update for Debian on the Chromebook, Debian 11/bullseye. I thought that might be nice to have, so I attempted to run the update through Chrome.  Twice. Both times the update failed. The following is a screen capture of a portion of the output log from the second failed update attempt.

The message “Failed to connect to bus” is sprinkled through the log file. I have some idea what might be the problem, but I don’t feel motivated to go track this down and possibly fix it. I guess I’m lazy. There’s nothing wrong with Debian 10, it’s more than good enough. But I’m always going to be attracted to the new and shiny things of this world, such as operating system updates like Debian 11. So I’ll just wait and see if it gets fixed sometime in the future. Until then I’ll carry on with buster and chill out.

I then checked the four browsers I have on this machine by running EFF’s Cover Your Tracks privacy test ( https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ ) just to see what happened. The browsers I tested (listing extensions where used) are:

• Chrome Version 95.0.4638.69 (Official Build) (x86_64)
  • Using Adblock Plus and Privacy Badger
• Vivaldi 4.3.2439.65 (Stable channel) (x86_64)
  • Using Javascript Restrictor
• Firefox 94.0.1 (64-bit)
  • Using Privacy Badger
• Safari Version 15.1 (17612.2.9.1.20)

They’ll be presented in that order below.

Everybody loves to hate on Google, especially Google Chrome. I’ve read more than one article on the web where the author hysterically exhorts their readers to delete Chrome before it sucks the end user’s very soul into the black depths of Alphabet’s digital hell. I suppose if you’re that paranoid then by all means drop Chrome. Except EFF’s test gave Chrome a very good score with regards to tracking, perhaps the highest a browser can get. I’ll keep Chrome around until there’s a real need to move on. And an interesting note: when I run the same test on my Chromebook running the latest Chrome OS, the score is the same as here.

Vivaldi was the second browser I tested. The first time I ran the test I was shocked when it came back as NOT blocking tracking ads and invisible trackers. Paradoxically fingerprinting was randomized. The shock came because months back I’d run the same test and blocking was in place. This meant that something had changed in Vivaldi, perhaps due to something I’d inadvertantly done. So I went exploring and found the following:

You’re looking at Vivaldi’s Preferences, Privacy section. The Blocking Level is towards the middle of the page. When I first opened it the level was set to No Blocking. I set it to Block Trackers and Ads and re-ran the test. The test came back with satisfactory blocking (yes in both columns as seen above). I don’t know how that changed, because I’ve never touched that except for the first time I set it to what you see now. The only way I know it could have changed is through an update. Lesson learned is to go back and check this again on every update in the future, which is somewhat sad as I’ve never had a browser flip a setting on an update.

The third browser I tested was Firefox. Note that the fingerprinting is unique, unlike Chrome and Vivaldi, who have random fingerprinting. Also note that the tabs across the top are the button-like tabs, which I don’t particularly care for. I’ve reached a point where I tend not to use Firefox, even on Linux.

Finally we come to Safari. It has the worst score of the four browsers I tested, even though Apple makes loud pledges about privacy and security. Safari on macOS (and probably everywhere else it runs) gives one pause to wonder if Apple is all talk in this area. I think they are.

I also would like to point out that the tabs are back to normal. I ran with Safari’s button tabs right before this update, when the change was foisted on my Mac in a Safari update. It was absolutely hideous. I’ve done everything I can to avoid using Safari, even setting Vivaldi as my default web browser. Between these results, the button-vs-tabs fiasco, and other issues, I now have no trust in Safari, nor the Apple developers who work on Safari, to produce a quality product.

So there you have it. A very brief look at four of the latest browsers on the current macOS. And before you ask, I will never install Microsoft’s Edge on my Mac.

I’ve been writing blog posts since 2005, when I created my first official blog using BlogSpot. This was right before it was acquired by Google. I wrote on it until I started this blog around December 2013, and I’ve been writing here ever since.

And for the record, I had a personal website on GeoCities that I started in the late 1990s, using Macromedia’s HomeSite ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_HomeSite ) to directly edit HTML and nascent CSS. I know that things have evolved quite a bit since then, but I have to credit HomeSite with helping me build a foundation and understanding of HTML and related technologies. Unfortunately for me, Yahoo bought GeoCities and then slowly destroyed it. I had long since left for BlogSpot before it died.

So much for history.

Look around my site and in the past you’ll find me writing effusively about blog writing using an iPad Pro and Ulysses. That lasted a few posts, perhaps a dozen at the most, before I basically gave it up and went back to using the ‘classic’ web-based WordPress editor on that same iPad. Later I dropped away from using an iPad Pro for writing because I discovered the combination of cover and keyboard with an iPad weren’t that good to use long term.

As I came to (re)learn, any keyboard other than a standard PC keyboard is inefficient to use and, for me, will eventually drive me away from using it. I thus have my folding Microsoft portable Bluetooth keyboard, which sits in my bag and only comes out to check and charge it on occasion. I even wrote about using that with my iPhone.

But I like to write. Sure, I can use my notebook to do that, but the problem with a notebook is that it’s got too much on it already, like open source code editors, shells, and special applications. In other words lots of distractions.

A Chromebook doesn’t. It is Chrome running on top of a stripped down Linux distribution created by Google. Sure, if I want to, I can actually start up a small VM on the Chromebook itself and drop into a shell running Debian 10:

But for the most part I enjoy working on an integrated system with a real keyboard while living in the Chrome browser. That’s pretty much what I do already with Chrome on all my other systems, except perhaps when I fire up Vivaldi, which is pretty much the only other browser I personally want to use, and that’s due to some of its unique features, which I’ve also already written about.

This Chromebook I’m using is the next version of the Chromebook I purchased for my part-time project, a Lenovo Flex 5 13ILT6. This Chromebook runs on an Intel quad-core eleventh-generation i3 running at around 3GHz. It also comes with 8GiB of memory and a 128GiB SSD. The whole package makes for a very smooth experience all around, far smoother and faster than any tablet, including an Apple iPad. It’s very thin and lightweight and can run for days without having to even see a charger.

One last reason for this particular Chromebook: Google will update it up to June of 2029, or for the next eight years. And if, by some chance, I don’t want Chrome OS on here anymore, then I’ll install either Debian or Ubuntu, and get on with it. Since it already comes with Linux/Debian preinstalled, I don’t see moving to a “purer” Linux a problem.

Overall I’m finding my way back to writing, due in no small part to having a computer that I would argue is purpose-built for writers and writing. Ulysses tried to achieve that stripped down creative writing environment, but on an iPad, and I don’t think they’ve quite succeeded, at least for me. I’ve made my piece with the newish WordPress web editor, which clears the way for me to use with any Chromebook, especially this one.

The price for this Chromebook was US$450 at my local Orlando Florida Costco, which was $50 more than the prior generation. I know that’s expensive, but it’s a damn sight less expensive than an Apple iPad Pro 12″, which requires the purchase of a keyboard to use it for efficient typing and writing. I’m more than happy with this setup. Now, if I can just get more disciplined (again) about writing. Unfortunately you can’t buy extra discipline at your local Costco.

I’m now approaching my first month using the Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook, 13IML05. I purchased it from a Costco when it was selling for US$400, $100 less than what was claimed to be the regular price. It came with a tenth generation Intel Core I3 processor, 8GiB of RAM, and a 128GiB SSD. It’s powerful enough to drive the Chrome browser which is the centerpiece of Chrome OS on this notebook.

If you’re always in Chrome, if you’re using the web-based versions of major applications such as Microsoft’s Office 360, or if you prefer the Google equivalents to Word, Excel and PowerPoint (Docs, Sheets, and Slides), then paying twice or more for an equivalent machine from Apple is a waste of your money. Really.

Before you pipe up about how Google is stealing your personal information, let me remind you that your personal information has been mined and cross-correlated by data brokers for decades, long before everyone started to voluntarily share that with various web companies. After all, how many years did you have your address and phone number in the AT&T white pages? Remember the opening of the first Terminator movie? Just a few sheets of paper in a Terminator’s hands and he was off and killing all sorts of folks because they happened to be named Sarah Connor.

It has a long battery life, allowing me to sit in a comfortable piece of furniture and word smith. It’s light weight and comfortable and cool in operation. And if I want to get real crazy, I can open up a Linux shell and go do fairly complex Linux “stuff”, usually in shell or Python. Chrome OS is essentially Linux with the Chrome browser as the primary UI.

There will always be a niche need for something as complex as a MacBook Air or Pro. I get that. You need a Pro to edit video and do series “creative” work, except… It’s getting to the point where a lot of that can be pushed back up to the “cloud.” All you need is a UI into that, and you’re on your way to getting some serious work done.

As for the argument of being “locked in” by Google, what do you think you have using Apple products, or Microsoft products? I’m truly tired hearing the about the evils of Big Tech. In spite of what you might think, it’s not nearly as bad as the critics would make it all out. We get in “trouble” with Big Tech because we’re too lazy to think through to the consequences of our actions.

I enjoy using the Lenovo. I enjoy using the web-based tools (such as the latest WordPress editor, Gutenberg). I like the quality feel of the Lenovo, which I believe is at least as good as any MacBook Air. This also means I’m giving up my attempts to write using my iPad Pros. I’ll continue to use them as content consumption devices until they eventually die or else Apple refuses to eventually upgrade them with iOS. On that day, I’ll probably continue to further use them until they just die and I will then recycle them. But not replace them. I’ve purchased my last iPad.

A key part of my decision process is retirement. Whatever reason(s) I may have had to buy and use Apple gear is vanishing as time goes along. I no longer see the benefits, and I now question if I ever did or if I was just fooling myself into buying Apple gear because of the perceived coolness factor. Who knows anymore…