Hey all,
I’m looking to turn my current laptop into essentially a stationary gaming/heavy-use machine and, to that end, I’ve been looking for something to to replace it for movies/music and browsing. Portability is a must, as is decent battery life. I’ve tentatively come to the conclusion that a Chromebook of some flavor would be pretty good for what I’m looking for, but I’d like some more-educated advice than simply my research has unearthed.
The biggest problem that I can foresee with a Chromebook is the limited native media player - I currently use VLC, but ChromeOS can’t run it and the on-board media player seems more limited in file type compatibility. I’ve been able to come up with two ways to get around that:
First, Chrome Remote Desktop, which would (ideally) allow me to access movies and music from my old laptop and stream it to my Chromebook. If anyone has experience with the Remote Desktop app and can confirm that this is possible or tell me that it’s not a workable solution, I’d be much obliged.
Second, (and this is a slightly-more in-depth solution) I could load Ubuntu onto the Chromebook, which would allow me to use VLC and (I assume) a bunch of other programs that I may or may not decide to put on there. My big question with this regards the difficulty; I’m decently proficient with Windows, but I’ve essentially no experience “diving under the hood.” If I decide to go this route, what could I expect from the learning curve? Like I said, I’m just looking to install something other than apps on the Ubuntu side, but nothing too crazy.
Lastly, if anyone has either horror stories involving their Chromebook, I’m happy to listen to those too. I’m certainly not wedded to the idea (though I think the concept is pretty neat) and if you’ve any other suggestions for a media/browsing machine, I’d also appreciate those.