There is an official way. Turn on developer mode, open a shell, run "sudo crossystem dev_boot_legacy=1", then reboot and hit ctrl-L to boot a PC BIOS (SeaBIOS) that can install Linux. Then install and run any Linux distribution you like.
Right. Crouton lets you run Linux in a chroot under Chrome OS. This lets you completely replace Chrome OS with your Linux distribution of choice. Both make sense depending on what you're trying to do.
