Chromebooks Are Great (in theory) but Still TOO SLOW with x86!
My biggest issue with Chromebooks is that they are simply too slow. Lately, I’ve noticed my Chromebook lagging more and more, and it’s striking when I realize that my cellphone—priced about the same—still runs relatively smoothly.
Why are Chromebooks so slow? A lot of it comes down to the limited RAM and underpowered CPUs these devices use. I’m not sure why Chromebook manufacturers continue to offer such low-end options. I understand that the goal is to provide a low-cost alternative to traditional PCs, but it feels absurd when my phone costs the same and still outperforms it. At some point, Chromebook makers need to either start competing with mid-level laptops or abandon x86 entirely in favor of ARM-based chips.
Ultimately, Chromebooks have incredible potential—they could blend the simplicity and speed of mobile devices with the functionality of a full laptop. If manufacturers focused on smarter hardware choices rather than just cutting costs, these devices could finally live up to their promise and become a genuinely competitive option in the computing world.
It's too bad you can't upgrade the RAM on most chromebooks as they solder it to the board. :(
I highly recomend Chromebooks to the average user! Since most users just use a webpage anyways!
But you CAN put linux on them and use that!
From the very beginning, I have always thought of Chromebooks as super low-end laptops. There only real advantage is price. If they went to higher end hardware then they would be more expensive and lose what is really their only advantage. I would rather just get a cheap laptop and run Linux on it.
Chromebooks (ChromeOS) runs on Linux, but it's limited. For example, my Chromebook is already Linux, but I have to enable the full Linux experience in the settings which allows me to run Debian alongside the ChromeOS distro.
Don't get me wrong, my current Chromebook is fine (if I had a reasonable amount of Chrome tabs opened), but when I enabled Linux so I can use the desktop version of Brave (and not the Android version of Brave) and run GIMP, it began being a little slower.
Also, every once in a while, Chrome will start downloading updates or the system would get randomly slow for no reason, making the CPU unable to handle a handful of tabs.
The upside of ChromeOS is that I can run most Android apps I use on it and play some Android games without needing a separate Android emulator.
The CPU is really the biggest limiting factor and I'm stuck on 4 gigs of ram, which is BS, but it is manageable considering I only use Chromebook for browsing the web. It's definitely a fast OS, but the hardware limitations suck ass.lol
I've never tried it, but AFAIK you can download chrome for any PC, so if you want better hardware, you just have to buy better hardware. I guess I would just rather have a slightly more capable machine (including, for example, the ability to upgrade RAM if I want) and install a "normal" Linux distribution vs. using the more limited Chrome OS.
There's not a whole lot of price difference (depending on the deals available at the time I guess) between a chrome device and a low end Windows notebook that has a little bit better hardware. I may or may not keep Windows on it but I would chose the latter every time.
I have an Android phone but I guess I don't really use any apps I care about using on a desktop/laptop. I do wish modern operating systems were a bit lighter. There's so much bloat. Except for the lack of newer app support, I'm perfectly comfortable using Windows XP, Windows 7, OS X 10.4 or 10.5, etc. I use Xubuntu as my go to Linux distro which uses the XFCE desktop which is relatively light but 'relatively' is the key word. Seems like these days you need what would have been considered a super computer not all that long ago just to run the OS.
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