Using Git on a Chromebook

When using my Chromebook I mostly use the command line when using Git but sometimes I find it easier (and quicker) to use a GUI when looking back at history and being able to visually understand who’s been working on which branches.

Possibly because my Git command line skills need some more work and possibly because I’m a lot more familiar with applications like SourceTree in Windows.

I tried to install Sourcetree on my Chromebook but ran into multiple issues so gave up and started looking for something else.

I managed to install a couple of other popular git clients but they weren’t great and some of the screen layouts were a bit messed up with buttons not clickable or text in unviewable locations.

One client stood out from the rest which was GitKraken, I’ve seen a couple friends using it on both Windows and Linux, it is visually very nice and looks really appealing. The only downside here is that it’s not free unless you’re only working on local repos or public remote repos ie open source projects.

The only other one that I managed to get working was an application called GitAhead. It looks nice and you can easily see/jump around the history of the various branches.

I’ll add my notes on installing each client here soon but they were both fairly straightfoward to install.