# Off-topic: is a Chromebook any use for dev work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Other\ **Created:** [October 9, 2020, 11:00am UTC](https://community.haxe.org/t/off-topic-is-a-chromebook-any-use-for-dev-work/2711 "2020-10-09T11:00:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rathewolf](https://community.haxe.org/user_avatar/community.haxe.org/rathewolf/32/1335_2.png) [@rathewolf](https://community.haxe.org/u/rathewolf)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 11:00am UTC](https://community.haxe.org/t/off-topic-is-a-chromebook-any-use-for-dev-work/2711/1 "2020-10-09T11:00:51Z")
It’s been a long time since I’ve ever bought a laptop. For the past decade+, I’ve only owned and used two old lowest-end (at the time) Macbooks Pros. At the moment, I was thinking about buying a cheapo to use temporarily, since I don’t have mine on me. Also, I think it’s just nice to gather some solid (ARM) cheapos to be used as arcade machines. 🙂 I’m curious to hear what various multi-boot / virtual machine set-ups haxers use use? Maybe even some sort of iOS VM app set-up? All text ‘n terminal Plan9 sort of haxers?? I’m assuming you can just install a Linux distro on a solid Chromebook, and just pray to the Linux gods for hardware drivers… I imagine a lot of people dual-boot or VM Windows just for the sake of using Flash/HaxeDevelop! (I did.) Though, maybe we’ve got better IDE options nowadays… ---
**Author:** ![Confidant](https://community.haxe.org/user_avatar/community.haxe.org/confidant/32/63_2.png) [@Confidant](https://community.haxe.org/u/Confidant)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 3:28pm UTC](https://community.haxe.org/t/off-topic-is-a-chromebook-any-use-for-dev-work/2711/2 "2020-10-09T15:28:24Z")
I’m still chugging along with a 2010 Macbook Pro. I put in an SSD and it’s pretty fast still. I use VirtualBox for some testing with Windows but my needs are minimal for that. Using VSCode for most development—it’s very good. ---
**Author:** ![joshtynjala](https://community.haxe.org/user_avatar/community.haxe.org/joshtynjala/32/792_2.png) [@joshtynjala](https://community.haxe.org/u/joshtynjala)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://community.haxe.org/t/off-topic-is-a-chromebook-any-use-for-dev-work/2711/3 "2020-10-09T16:43:52Z")
Modern Chromebooks can install and run Linux apps, so you might not even need to replace ChromeOS. I haven’t tried Haxe on a Chromebook, but a while back, I set up a development environment with Visual Studio Code and the AS3 & MXML extension. Code intelligence and debugging in Flash Player all worked! It was a super low-end Chromebook, so I wouldn’t use that as my main machine, but a higher end Chromebook might be tempting to try. ---
**Author:** ![rathewolf](https://community.haxe.org/user_avatar/community.haxe.org/rathewolf/32/1335_2.png) [@rathewolf](https://community.haxe.org/u/rathewolf)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2020, 7:34pm UTC](https://community.haxe.org/t/off-topic-is-a-chromebook-any-use-for-dev-work/2711/4 "2020-10-09T19:34:55Z")
Hmmm, interesting! Yeah, an old Intel MBP is still tough to beat, even 10 years later! Can VM or even triple-boot into anything! I believe I used to have the last core2duo model, but even that was solid with a ssd, close to Confidant’s. So recent ChromeOS can just install Linux apps straight out the box? That makes it infinitely more usable than I imagined! So it’s just a web-centric Linux distro now, yeah?.. I’ll keep an eye out for both then. 🙂 3rd gen MBPs and… well, I’ll have to research for a solid chromebook model. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![ShiftDelete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v2/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@ShiftDelete](https://community.haxe.org/u/ShiftDelete)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2020, 7:29pm UTC](https://community.haxe.org/t/off-topic-is-a-chromebook-any-use-for-dev-work/2711/5 "2020-10-18T19:29:31Z")
I haven’t made the jump to a Chromebook _yet,_ but I’ve definitely been tempted. I figure that if I do this, I’ll probably just make use of a cheap VPS (via Digital Ocean or some other provider) for various bits of dev work.