

Install Ubuntu On Your Chromebook - greenido
http://greenido.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/chromebook-for-developers-and-hackers/

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avian
All of these "install ... on Chromebook" articles fail to mention that on
recent Chromebooks without a physical developer mode switch (Samsung's ARM-
based one, Pixel) you have to press a specific hidden keyboard combination and
endure the big scary "developer mode" warning _on each boot_. In my view that
makes it practically useless for day-to-day use as a general purpose laptop.

You can flash the first stage bootloader to remove that warning, but that is
not documented well (if you can call several contradictory forum threads
documentation), involves taking the laptop apart and gives you exactly one
try: it either works or bricks the device permanently.

In addition to that, at least Samsung's Chromebooks are not very well designed
and can be seriously damaged from userspace when running a general-purpose
distribution (Google for burning speakers on ARM Chromebook for instance)

~~~
broodbucket
On regular laptops, you open the lid and press the "On" button.

On my Chromebook, it boots as soon as you open the lid, and so I press Ctrl-D
instead of the "On" button. I thought it'd be a pain, but it doesn't bother me
at all, and you say that makes it "practically useless"?

~~~
tuananh
He exaggerated to make a point but Ctrl D every single time you boot is kinda
annoying.

~~~
jonknee
One more finger annoying than the power button which is what you would do on
any other laptop. There is not a desktop Linux user alive who has not put up
with more annoying things than hitting two keys to boot.

~~~
avian
Incidentally, I'm a desktop Linux user for more than 10 years. I don't mind
having to do annoying things once or twice to set things up.

I do mind having to do them each and every time I pick up the computer,
especially when I have bought it believing that I won't have to.

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rwmj
Lots of other distros work on the Chromebook (and have for longer). Here's for
example Fedora 19 and Arch Linux instructions:

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F19/Remixes...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F19/Remixes#Samsung_Exynos_5_Dual_Core_Cortex_A15)
[http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung-
chro...](http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung-chromebook)

The next challenge is getting KVM working. The Chromebook has an A15 chip
which has hardware assisted virtualization. Unfortunately the firmware
disables HYP mode, but the Xen guys managed to workaround this in their
bootloader so it should be possible for KVM too.

Another note about the Chromebook is it is _not_ possible to boot it from an
external hard drive. You have to boot it from USB flash although after boot
you can of course use a real hard drive as the root filesystem.

~~~
jlgreco
Yeah, I'm running Debian Wheezy on a Pixel and, besides building my own more
current kernels, there is nothing special going on here.

~~~
rwmj
However the Pixel has an Intel chip doesn't it?

~~~
jlgreco
It does, though most people seem to suggest the same crouton stuff for it. I
tried that for a weekend and think that advice is misguided.

------
petroica
Tried Crouton on my Acer C7 Chromebook a few months back, and it was buggy as
hell. Switched to the Chrubuntu script, and it's been a dream. I'm surprised
it's not mentioned at all.

[http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-
scri...](http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-script-to-
rule-them-all_31.html)

------
1945
Is it not possible without "virtualizing" Ubuntu on top of the host OS with
crouton?

~~~
broodbucket
Yes it is, Chrubuntu boots directly.

[http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/chrubuntu-
one-s...](http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-script-
to-rule-them-all_31.html)

------
_mc
Running X on Y! Man, I am telling you no one is happy with what they have ;-)

~~~
rbanffy
Could be worse - you can't to that on a Surface RT.

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sethammons
Finally was motivated to try this out. Totally happy. Honestly, all I really
wanted was python and a nice shell, but having a full OS is great.

------
yuhong
Personally, I wish for an ARM notebook market to come out of the Chromebook,
with different configurations for Chrome OS and Ubuntu etc.

~~~
6ren
I keep being surprised that there is no real ARM netbook (samsung's chromebook
and asus transformer come closest).

I think the reason is because ARM is significantly less performant than x86.
You don't notice it on a phone/tablet, because the stack is optimised (it has
to be!) the special-purpose OS, lots of stuff in silicon (esp video), games
and (mobile) webpages are written for the platform. But for general
computation - e.g. compiling - it's much slower.

ARM has optimised power consumption for decades; x86 has optimised performance
for decades, so I shouldn't be surprised.

PS: doesn't ubuntu have an ARM laptop in the works? (along the lines of their
EDGE phone)?

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
How about the Surface RT? Even comes with file manager and two command lines.

~~~
rbanffy
There's a pool of sarcasm under your post

~~~
rwmj
Presumably MSFT will be having a firesale now they've realized that Windows RT
was a bad idea. All we need is someone to work out how to root them, and then
cheap A9-based quad-core laptops for running Linux.

~~~
rbanffy
The hardware seems quite good.

------
Nursie
Have had Ubuntu on my ARM chromebook since late last year. Only issue so far
is that the version of Slim dm that is available for it from the 12.04 repos
is b0rked and doesn't speak to consolekit properly, resulting in all sorts of
hard to diagnose fun with reboot and other permissions.

------
sbuccini
I just did this last night on my Samsung Chromebook. One problem I immediately
ran into was the difficulty of getting programs to run in Ubuntu because of my
ARM processor. Any suggestions?

~~~
Nursie
What programs?

If you're trying x86/wine then forget it. But the usual suspects are available
from the ubuntu repos just fine.

~~~
sbuccini
Ah, okay. I'm wondering if I should ditch this one and pick up an Intel-based
Chromebook instead.

I actually just need a cheap solution to program in this year, and I'd love to
step away from Windows and start using Linux (since OS X is outside of my
price point). Any suggestions?

~~~
Nursie
Far as I'm concerned you can do pretty much anything FOSS, so it's a perfectly
good platform for linux development.

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srik
Things seem better now. I remember bricking the original beta google
chromebook that google gave out for testing because of following murky
instructions.

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caiob
This makes me wonder, despite pricing, what are the reasons to buy a
chromebook instead of any other laptop on the market?

~~~
Nursie
Me, I have a long running ARM fetish ever since debian-ising my NSLU2 back in
the day. Also for some sick reason I like to repurpose stuff.

All that said - it turns out ChromeOS with developer access enabled (so I can
get a proper shell and a normal ssh client) covers about 80% of my needs in a
client machine.

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msoad
Does this work for ARM ChromeBooks too?

~~~
jdn
Yep, Crouton was originally made for the ARM Chromebook from what I
understand.

~~~
greenido
True. We did it on pixel as well.

~~~
jdn
Yes you did! Posted from a Crouton'd Chromebook Pixel.

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k_bx
Is there a way to press a "super" button on chromebooks?

~~~
broodbucket
It's the former "Caps Lock" key

