musings

Let’s just say gaming together is a great way to stay connected with people, especially right now. Though I’m not much of a gamer, good part games are definitely well appreciated. So Jackbox has been a great source of laughter and bonding during this time. All you need is a computer and a phone - it’s really that simple.

The tricky part was sharing everything over the internet. But I have been using Daily.co which has a web-UI for video chatting, personalized URLs, and rooms that the user can maintain. It’s also got an API - so it basically hits all of my video chatting needs and gets into my coder curiosity.

In terms of testing, it has worked out pretty well to video chat with 5 total devices with one streaming the game - between Toronto, Ontario and Ann Arbor, Michigan. And for a Chromebook, I honestly can’t ask for much more. Definitely no hard-core, GPU intensive games on this machine.

While classes are canceled, I decided to update my Crostini container to Debian 10. On a previous attempt, I was using the Chrome OS 80 Beta - which had many different issues - and had to reload my container after a powerwash downgrade to Chrome OS 79 Stable. I guess that’s what I get for using Beta. This time I was on Chrome OS 80 Stable, and the only way to upgrade was to redo Crostini. And everything seems to be working smoothly - after I discovered that the git-all package is not the same as the git package in the Debian repository and using git-all removes some critical cros-* packages.

In another COVID-19 related topic, I installed Steam and tested it with the Jackbox Party Pack games on the Debian 10 system. Everything seems to be working great, and Linux support for audio output has been around for a bit but it required some quick terminal and crosh commands link. Now, the trick is to be able to stream/video+audio share to other people.

As my courses continue, there are brief moments where debugging isn’t really about a normal linux issue, but rather a Crostini container and Chrome OS issue. For instance, Docker uses containers mapped to specific ports and folders in the Linux system - however accessing it is not as simply as going to https://localhost:8080. For some reason that didn’t work, and I need to access my docker container at the http://penguin.linux.test:8080/ address. Not sure what happened there, but I’m glad I found another way to access the Linux container. Turns out that Docker support in Crostini was a fairly recent addition (within the last 6 months), so that is pretty convenient for coursework.

Additionally, connecting external USB devices to Crostini has been available for a bit, but I finally got around to trying it. And what do you know, you now can develop Arduino projects! I’m sure there are more reasons why open USB ports in Crostini is important, but this was a pleasant surprise.

Discovering the various capabilities, limitations, and quirks of Chrome OS & Crostini has been quite interesting. A typical environment right now involves running a React development server for front-end web development and a Ganache server for Ethereum blockchain development.

Occasionally, the Crostini system will bog down because of the processing and memory limitations…but that is currently my only complaint.

Side note: the Chromebook Go was recently announced with up to 16GB RAM, 25GB storage, Core i7 processor, and 4k screen. These things are starting to tackle the big players in the PC world.

The answer is yes - a Chromebook can do it; but…

Storage is an issue that I should have seen coming. Crostini cannot access the 128 GB microSD card that I inserted - it can only use local storage which is unfortunate because I only had 32 GB to work with. Eventually it took nearly 20 GB of space, and the rest of it belonged to the actual ChromeOS system. Then it was daily reminders that I was running low on memory.

In other news, the Crostini container is fantastic - an actively developed Debian 9 container where functionality is consistently being built that is smoothly integrated into the rest of the operating system. Easily runs Atom as a text editor, Python for various programming projects, and LaTeX for compiling reports.

But again, the memory issues - so I needed to upgrade: same exterior and RAM, a little better processor, four times the storage.

Chromebook specifications:

• Samsung Chromebook Plus (V2)
• Intel Core M3
• 128 GB eMMC storage
• 4 GB RAM

The big question: can a Chromebook survive the rigors of university life? More specifically, the last semester of an aerospace engineering program with various coding projects.

After going through most of my life with Windows computers (from 98 to 10, and everything in between), I wanted a laptop that was lighter in hardware and software.

Windows machines had fairly large dimensions and the software was bogged down with various pieces of legacy “bloatware”. The linux subsystem was a not a good replacement because it was simply too slow to use.

Dual-booting was a good temporary solution but it was a little difficult to access files between the two different OS, and occasionally the linux system needed to be reinstalled.

Mac OS products were never really in consideration due to cost and just my personal preferences on a more open ecosystem.

Enter Chromebooks: based on the open-source Chromium project, built on top of a linux system, small form-factor hardware, fairly large battery life, and highly optimized for running a Chrome browser. Typically seen as a simple machine to browse the web and run a few small applications, the Crostini project containerizes the Debian 9 subsystem and opens up a whole new level of functionality. Basically, a whole linux system integrated into the Chrome OS system.

So we shall see how this goes…

Chromebook specifications:

• Samsung Chromebook Plus (V2)
• Intel Celeron
• 32 GB eMMC storage
• 4 GB RAM