My main laptop doesn’t last more than 2-3 hours even though I am just using it for writing. Also, sometimes, I want to carry my laptop to the garden or a coffee shop but the current one is too heavy to carry.
And that’s when I decided to get a Chromebook — Asus Chromebook C423N. Here’s how it looked when I opened it for the first time:
It’s lightweight, lasts 8-10 hours on a single charge, and looks pretty too. Now, I can carry it anywhere I want without worrying about the weight and the battery dying.
Initial setup
Chromebooks come with an installed Google Chrome browser and if you want to install another one, there’s a problem. You will have to install the mobile version of the browser and there’s no fun to use it. But… you can enable the “Linux development environment” to install any web browser or other apps.
Along with the Google Chrome browser, the followings are the apps and tools that I needed to be installed on the Chromebook:
- Obsidian
- Visual Studio Code
- Skype
- Brave Browser
- Microsoft Todo
Skype and Microsoft Todo apps were easy to install, I just searched in the Play Store and clicked “install”. However, the mobile version of Obsidian isn’t well compatible, and the mobile version of Brave Browser doesn’t let you install extensions and set up the crypto wallet.
The last option was to install these apps through the Linux environment. Just 2-clicks enabled the Linux development environment on the machine within a few minutes and then I had a terminal open in front of me.
I downloaded the .deb version of Obsidian and Visual Studio Code, moved them to the automatically created Linux files folder, and installed them by using the following command:
sudo dpkg -i package_name.debHowever, for the Brave browser, I followed the instructions provided on the official website.
I also had to install some Chrome extensions like Grammarly, Zoho Vault, Raindrop.io, Zoho Annotator, and Adblock Plus.
And within minutes, I was all set to start writing.
This is what the screen looked like while I was writing this post.
Update: Dec 15, 2021
I wrote a detailed guide to set up a blogging environment on Chromebooks — from what apps to install to various tips tricks that will help you make the blogging process productive.
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