Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?
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@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Obsolesce said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Pete-S said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop only computer?
I'm thinking about something like Asus Chromebox but maybe there are other hardware options as well.
Not if you want optimal usefulness.
I'd use one in addition to or to compliment a regular laptop/ultrabook, but I'd never get by with one as a replacement.
Unless you have desktop apps you need to run, I'd argue that it runs actually better.
I don't know about better - but for 'normals' non-IT types, yeah it's probably all they need these days with rare exception (gaming PC would be one of them).
Chrome is super fast and light on ChromeOS. And loads like instantly. Don't know any even Linux distro that handles running Chrome as well as ChromeOS does. For the best memory utilization and lowest CPU needs for the same task, it's pretty ideal.
It's possible if you are only using a Window Manager like i3 instead of a full desktop environment.
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@black3dynamite said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Obsolesce said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Pete-S said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop only computer?
I'm thinking about something like Asus Chromebox but maybe there are other hardware options as well.
Not if you want optimal usefulness.
I'd use one in addition to or to compliment a regular laptop/ultrabook, but I'd never get by with one as a replacement.
Unless you have desktop apps you need to run, I'd argue that it runs actually better.
I don't know about better - but for 'normals' non-IT types, yeah it's probably all they need these days with rare exception (gaming PC would be one of them).
Chrome is super fast and light on ChromeOS. And loads like instantly. Don't know any even Linux distro that handles running Chrome as well as ChromeOS does. For the best memory utilization and lowest CPU needs for the same task, it's pretty ideal.
It's possible if you are only using a Window Manager like i3 instead of a full desktop environment.
Even then it's not as light, just approximating it. When Chome itself is the only Windows manager, it's crazy light.
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I suppose I should give it another try - just so I can say I've touched it.
I found the fact that they give you a desktop, yet you can't put short-cuts on it extremely annoying.
I have no idea how local storage is used/accessed.
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@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I found the fact that they give you a desktop, yet you can't put short-cuts on it extremely annoying.
To what would you shortcut? Logically that doesn't fit the use case. They aren't the only desktop to do away with putting things on the desktop space.
In my use of it, that there is a desktop somewhere is.... I didn't even realize that there was one because there is no reason to see it.
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@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I have no idea how local storage is used/accessed.
From an app in a modern way just like you do with iOS or Android. This is not a legacy system like Windows where you work with files and have the OS find an app to manipulate them. The file system is a database that talks directly to the apps and the apps handle how data is stored.
Same thing we've been preaching about modernizing how apps work. ChromeOS actually does it natively.
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@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I have no idea how local storage is used/accessed.
From an app in a modern way just like you do with iOS or Android. This is not a legacy system like Windows where you work with files and have the OS find an app to manipulate them. The file system is a database that talks directly to the apps and the apps handle how data is stored.
Same thing we've been preaching about modernizing how apps work. ChromeOS actually does it natively.
Yeah, I get it, you like that method. The problem with that is you HAVE to know what app was used for the data in question. and with the "flexibility" in data between things like excel and word documents, you can't be sure which you might have used to make the container housing the data.
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@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
The problem with that is you HAVE to know what app was used for the data in question.
Um... how would you have files and not know the app? If that happens, you should rethink why you have a file.
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@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
and with the "flexibility" in data between things like excel and word documents, you can't be sure which you might have used to make the container housing the data.
Apps like that don't exist here, so I can't fathom when this could come up. It's a nice theory of not knowing anything about a file that you created, but it's not a reasonable level of incompetence... meaning it's a level of incompetence too low to have happen in one set of cases, and not low enough for another. So when using a modern device, it's really not an issue at all.
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@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
excel and word documents, you can't be sure which you might have used to make the container housing the data.
Things like that are so close because they are actually one app and just present to you like they are multiple. So that problem actually doesn't exist in the case of your example, even on Windows. Open MS Office and it'll handle displaying and opening the data in the right way regardless of which tool you used. Same with all modern office suites.
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@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I suppose I should give it another try - just so I can say I've touched it.
I found the fact that they give you a desktop, yet you can't put short-cuts on it extremely annoying.
I have no idea how local storage is used/accessed.
I don't use the desktop for shortcuts even on Windows. I don't see why it's needed. It's just a clutter space, it's so much easier to have the shortcuts on the task bar, or start menu... Windows Key + Search works great on Windows and Linux GUI
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For the file "issue" you are basically talking about end user incompetence in an edge case where they are going out of their way to be obtuse and confuse themselves; while the 99% use case is way, way easier and more straightforward than what they use today.
Today, on Windows, users are constantly working with files, file types, file extensions, hidden files and stuff that they don't understand. It's confusing and hard. The ChromeOS approach fixes that for almost all the cases. It makes normal computing easy, or at least way easier. Files as a concept are too much for the average user.
If users are working with files on ChromeOS, they've decided to make things that should be easy into something hard. They are breaking the model and inducing a difficult situation, but not one any harder than it is already on Windows (Windows doesn't magically solve your problem either). But it is one that they could have generally avoided.
It's a baby and bathwater situation. It's vastly easier, but because you can contrive an edge case where it might only be "about the same" it's not good enough. But if that's not good enough, how are any other options even on the table all being harder?
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@Obsolesce said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I don't use the desktop for shortcuts even on Windows. I don't see why it's needed. It's just a clutter space, it's so much easier to have the shortcuts on the task bar, or start menu... Windows Key + Search works great on Windows and Linux GUI
I honestly like using it as a scratch space for temp files. That said... ChromeOS doesn't have temp files in that way, so even my purpose for it goes away.
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One place where I often find issues is image editing on ChromeOS. It works, but it's not as easy as I think that it should be. Getting images from your camera, to the OS, and uploaded somewhere hasn't been totally as easy as possible like I think it should be there. Because it is a process of trying to work basically as a file backup service, the lack of transparent file handling makes it awkward.
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@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
and with the "flexibility" in data between things like excel and word documents, you can't be sure which you might have used to make the container housing the data.
Apps like that don't exist here, so I can't fathom when this could come up. It's a nice theory of not knowing anything about a file that you created, but it's not a reasonable level of incompetence... meaning it's a level of incompetence too low to have happen in one set of cases, and not low enough for another. So when using a modern device, it's really not an issue at all.
Well I guess you and the people you've always been around are just better than the people I've been around.
Several staff in my office work exactly as you suggest - by the app, not the file, then once in the app, they look for the file - but I can distinctly recall at least 3 occasions when my boss has done just what I suggested - couldn't find the file because she was looking for it in the wrong application. And she's not alone - several other staff over the years have done the same thing. Dropping back to File Explorer allows their searches to be extension agnostic and they always find their file.
Sure 3 times in 12+ years isn't frequent, but definitely isn't zero either.
The OneDrive and Online office apps don't work via application (I suppose you could argue that OD is the app or SharePoint) - I'm guessing Zoho doesn't work that way either... instead you see all of your files, and you simple double click on the one you want to via, and Zoho loads the required webapp.
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@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
excel and word documents, you can't be sure which you might have used to make the container housing the data.
Things like that are so close because they are actually one app and just present to you like they are multiple. So that problem actually doesn't exist in the case of your example, even on Windows. Open MS Office and it'll handle displaying and opening the data in the right way regardless of which tool you used. Same with all modern office suites.
uh - what? If you open word - by default it will not show you xls, xlsx files.
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@Obsolesce said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I suppose I should give it another try - just so I can say I've touched it.
I found the fact that they give you a desktop, yet you can't put short-cuts on it extremely annoying.
I have no idea how local storage is used/accessed.
I don't use the desktop for shortcuts even on Windows. I don't see why it's needed. It's just a clutter space, it's so much easier to have the shortcuts on the task bar, or start menu... Windows Key + Search works great on Windows and Linux GUI
I don't put shortcuts there either - but I do use it as a scratch pad for files.
That said, TONS of people do use the desktop for shortcuts - I can't force the owners here to do something different - As Scott would frequently tell us - it's not IT's job to get in business's way, and if I tried to force them to remember URLs or to use favorites, that would be getting in their way compared to just putting a bloody shortcut on the desktop, at least in their eyes.
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@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
For the file "issue" you are basically talking about end user incompetence in an edge case where they are going out of their way to be obtuse and confuse themselves; while the 99% use case is way, way easier and more straightforward than what they use today.
Today, on Windows, users are constantly working with files, file types, file extensions, hidden files and stuff that they don't understand. It's confusing and hard. The ChromeOS approach fixes that for almost all the cases. It makes normal computing easy, or at least way easier. Files as a concept are too much for the average user.
If users are working with files on ChromeOS, they've decided to make things that should be easy into something hard. They are breaking the model and inducing a difficult situation, but not one any harder than it is already on Windows (Windows doesn't magically solve your problem either). But it is one that they could have generally avoided.
It's a baby and bathwater situation. It's vastly easier, but because you can contrive an edge case where it might only be "about the same" it's not good enough. But if that's not good enough, how are any other options even on the table all being harder?
I have to give you that, but it's about culture change - because it is a fundimental shift from the windows world - made all the more challenging by having a similar setup to Windows - Desktop/Start Bar/ Start Button/Start Menu - these look like windows - so you EXPECT it to act that way, and when it doesn't for these typical users - it frustrates them.
If you want to be different - fine, but you should be so different as to not allow most of the bias you have from other OSes to leak in.
This was like Windows Mobile in the old days - they made it act just like Win9x - and that was crap on that type of interface.
Palm OS got it right (or whomever they stole the idea from). iPhones and Android use that same basic interface that Palm had (or again, whomever they stole it from). There is little to no confusion in working on a mobile versus working on a desktop, they are so radically different.
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@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Obsolesce said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I don't use the desktop for shortcuts even on Windows. I don't see why it's needed. It's just a clutter space, it's so much easier to have the shortcuts on the task bar, or start menu... Windows Key + Search works great on Windows and Linux GUI
I honestly like using it as a scratch space for temp files. That said... ChromeOS doesn't have temp files in that way, so even my purpose for it goes away.
yeah, that's true. Since editing a doc is in a webspace - you don't have the choice to really save the file/data to the desktop as a scratch pad... so you just have to save it into the cloud - it forces better behavior.
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@Dashrender said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@scottalanmiller said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
@Obsolesce said in Does ChromeOS make sense for a desktop?:
I don't use the desktop for shortcuts even on Windows. I don't see why it's needed. It's just a clutter space, it's so much easier to have the shortcuts on the task bar, or start menu... Windows Key + Search works great on Windows and Linux GUI
I honestly like using it as a scratch space for temp files. That said... ChromeOS doesn't have temp files in that way, so even my purpose for it goes away.
yeah, that's true. Since editing a doc is in a webspace - you don't have the choice to really save the file/data to the desktop as a scratch pad... so you just have to save it into the cloud - it forces better behavior.
Right, exactly.
