ChromeOS can do quite a bit. Crostini is a built in take on Distrobox/Toolbox that gives you a Debian container to install anything. Newer versions can run multiple containers and do GUI pass through. ChromeOS can also run Android apps (although some apps don't do this well). And you get a hyper efficient immutable base OS. Five years ago I could get 10+ hours on battery without trying, on airplane WiFi for example.
Yes it's not perfect. But it is a lot more than it was when it was released. I only replaced it with Fedora Kinoite when the outdated Chrome browser version started getting in my way.
If they use emacs as the web browser, quite likely.
My dad spent a couple years basically using it as his standard OS while consulting. Couldn't guarantee what software a company required, but if everything was done through emacs, he'd have no problem setting it up to his liking.
Emails, builds, etc. I think this was before the web browser was up to snuff though. I never quite got into it at that level, but the power users easily demonstrate the value of knowing a powerful system very well.
Did you mean for this to be as condescending or off-putting as it comes across? I'm really trying to be generous in my interpretation but I'm not sure how else to read it.
What else do most people, outside of tech, use computers for? There are web apps for basically everything now. Chromebooks have replaced 'real' computers in most schools and I'm really surprised that they haven't in most Offices. A lot of the windows PCs in offices end up being used as dumb terminals to run citrix or access web apps anyway.
