My ChromeOS machine is a thin client that's used for SSH, connecting to either a server somewhere, or a beefier computer at home, so I can work from the couch.

Originally had crouton set up for some local dev (CLI tools only to save RAM; vim and a compiler are all I need), but it kept trashing SD cards. Everything was run off SD cards, because my particular chromebook (Acer C720) doesn't have that much onboard storage, only 16GB or so. But SSH is really all that I need.

My preferred method is to run 90% of my stuff in a digitalocean coreos-based docker container, with the mosh-chrome extension to access it. The only things I don't run in the cloud is my browser (use the chromebook chrome browser, naturally) and a tiny number of cases where I have to run a tool on a full linux machine (use crouton, as per OP).

In this way, I can switch dev machines without missing a beat... just need to paste in my ssh key into the new chromebook's mosh-chrome, and I have a 100% functional dev machine again (sans the crouton-based stuff, of course, which is why I avoid using crouton as much as possible).