Mike,

I haven't seen any other answers to your query come in, so I thought
I'd take a stab.

Google's Chromebooks are _very_ specialized laptops. While the
underlying OS is Linux and while it may use a Gentoo packaging system,
the user does not have acces to any of it. The machine and the OS are
custom designed to _only_ run the Chrome web browser.

That's it.

Nothing else.

So, the concept of getting a shell and compiling other code is out.

Having said that, ... there is a built in "terminal" in the browser,
so you can ssh to other machines. Last I checked or used it, it didn't
support SSH tunnels, but they were working on it. There are also apps
that allow VNC connections. So, you might be able to do what you want
anyway.

The apps I'm talking about, by the way, are Chrome apps. So, a good
test to see if a Chromebook is right for you is to sit down at your
current Linux box, open Chrome OS, and then see if you can get your
work done. You'd need to start by looking at the apps available in the
Chrome Web Store:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore

There's a lot there. These apps run in one of two ways: as a
"weblication" that basically takes you to a web site or as an
in-browser app that's likely running via Javascript and other
HTML5/CSS wizardry.

If you can get through a week's worth of day-to-day work using nothing
but the Chrome browser and the apps you find, then go get a Chromebook
as it will be perfect for you. I'm one such candidate, but I'm a
cheap, frugal sort and just haven't ponied up the money to go get one
yet. I'd love one!

Hope this helps.

P.S. Go to a Best Buy and play with one. You should be able to get the
store person to take it out of "demo" mode so you can actually log
into your own Google account. Doing so will auto-magically load all
the "apps" you've installed in your Linux Chrome browser right onto
the machine (it's all synced via the Google cloud), so you'll be able
to test your real situation on a real Chromebook before you make a
purchase decision.

--
Brian D. Ropers-Huilman
612.234.7778 (m)