I wish Google had an official way of putting a Linux distribution on these machines. I know they want people working in Chrome OS but for me it just isn't enough.
If I could buy the Pixel and have an official way of putting Debian or something on it to make it a proper laptop I probably would buy one. I love the design, the specs are very decent and the display is beautiful.
Crouton is essentially that 'official' way. It's maintained by a hardware engineer from Google. https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton