Codestarter Blog codestarter.org rss archive How we turn $199 Chromebooks into Ubuntu-based code learning machines for kids By Tom Preston-Werner At Codestarter , we’re on a mission to put a developer-friendly laptop into the hands of every kid that wants to learn how to code. Since we rely on donations to make this happen, the less expensive the laptop, the more of them we can deliver. With this in mind, I set out to find a laptop that was both low cost AND high quality. My goal was to find a computer that I wouldn’t mind using as my own primary development machine. That meant it had to have an excellent keyboard, good trackpad, solid build quality, fast processor, at least 2GB of RAM, and a nice screen. After a bit of online research, an unlikely contender emerged: Chromebooks. At first glance these machines didn’t seem suitable, as they run ChromeOS, a bro...