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)