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Others have mentioned using crouton with a Chromebook. I dual boot my Chromebook with GalliumOS, a distro just for Chromebooks, and have been very happy with it

Others have mentioned using crouton with a Chromebook. I dual boot my Chromebook with GalliumOS, a distro just for Chromebooks, and have been very happy with it. Since Chromebooks have a limited set of hardware, you can see whether a particular model is supported before you install.

ge96 9y ago
Is your Chromebook intel? I had the "misfortune" of picking an ARM-based Chromebook haha, only bad thing so far is I can't install VS code. Geany... haha what is that?!!! Also the 4GB ram kind of sucks. How is GalliumOS to you? I use trusty (not os) primarily for i3.
- btschaegg 9y ago
  > only bad thing so far is I can't install VS code This is worth a note for many people. There are astonishingly few good editors that you can easily compile or get binaries for ARM CPUs. Upside: I ended up picking up Vim and Spacemacs because of this. Also note that crouton can be a bit hacky on those devices - I set up chroagh 3 times, and for each time, the X11 integration stopped working after a couple of weeks for some reason. Working from the TTY is still pretty doable, though. Also: Install the chroot on an SD card. Crouton requires you to put your device into Dev-Mode and press a hotkey on each boot. I ended up touching my spacebar during the prompt by accident once, and the thing happily wiped its flash memory. Another thing to keep in mind is that you most likely won't be able to run a custom kernel, even if you boot your own system. So, there's no guarantee you'll have the fancier options at your disposal (iotop, setting inotify-limits etc).
  - ge96 9y ago
    Oh my god that happened to me the wiping memory. That's what happened? Good to know man thanks. That super loud beep(s) too what the heck. Does ChromeOS by default implement something like TLP? I installed it in Linux side, but not sure if when you run linux if the TLP carries over. Maybe it doesn't matter anyway , my Chromebook still has like 95% capacity thank fully and it pulls on average like 10 Watts with a 35Wh battery... but it lasts I don't know 3-5 hrs trying to keep it between 30-80% charge. Thanks a lot for the great tips. What about read/write stuff on SD I think I heard it's hard on the SD card versus say USB 3.0 (use that for my Acer Cloudbook). Also what's up with right-click on Chromebooks, weird ways.
    - btschaegg 9y ago
      > Does ChromeOS by default implement something like TLP? I would assume the default system does power management quite well (at least on my device it does), so if you're running a chroot that shouldn't matter too much. If you boot your own system I'm not sure, though, I guess the best one can do is try. If you follow the instructions to set up an Arch Linux[1] boot system for your device for example, it will most likely just copy the ChromeOS kernel over, so I would assume the support also depends on the device's system... [1]: https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/ https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/
      - ge96 9y ago
        Arch linux?! Whaaaaa haha, you think I have a brain to follow directions! Anyway thanks for your time. I can't seem to find 8GB chromebooks, they might not exist yet and when they do expensive oh well. Quit being poor is what I keep saying to myself. "Hey buddy why don't you snap out of it and quit being poor?" haha.
        btschaegg 9y ago
        To clarify: I'm not suggesting you have to use Arch; pick whatever suits you most :-) I only wanted to point out that they don't have their own kernels for some devices, which indicates that it isn't practical to use a completely self-compiled kernel for whatever reason (I would assume there are some crucial blob drivers). Good luck with your setup!
        ge96 9y ago
        At some point it does seem more effort than it's worth, you know how about you budget and save to get a decent computer. yeah anyway thanks for the information

ge96 9y ago

Is your Chromebook intel? I had the "misfortune" of picking an ARM-based Chromebook haha, only bad thing so far is I can't install VS code. Geany... haha what is that?!!! Also the 4GB ram kind of sucks. How is GalliumOS to you? I use trusty (not os) primarily for i3.

btschaegg 9y ago
> only bad thing so far is I can't install VS code This is worth a note for many people. There are astonishingly few good editors that you can easily compile or get binaries for ARM CPUs. Upside: I ended up picking up Vim and Spacemacs because of this. Also note that crouton can be a bit hacky on those devices - I set up chroagh 3 times, and for each time, the X11 integration stopped working after a couple of weeks for some reason. Working from the TTY is still pretty doable, though. Also: Install the chroot on an SD card. Crouton requires you to put your device into Dev-Mode and press a hotkey on each boot. I ended up touching my spacebar during the prompt by accident once, and the thing happily wiped its flash memory. Another thing to keep in mind is that you most likely won't be able to run a custom kernel, even if you boot your own system. So, there's no guarantee you'll have the fancier options at your disposal (iotop, setting inotify-limits etc).
- ge96 9y ago
  Oh my god that happened to me the wiping memory. That's what happened? Good to know man thanks. That super loud beep(s) too what the heck. Does ChromeOS by default implement something like TLP? I installed it in Linux side, but not sure if when you run linux if the TLP carries over. Maybe it doesn't matter anyway , my Chromebook still has like 95% capacity thank fully and it pulls on average like 10 Watts with a 35Wh battery... but it lasts I don't know 3-5 hrs trying to keep it between 30-80% charge. Thanks a lot for the great tips. What about read/write stuff on SD I think I heard it's hard on the SD card versus say USB 3.0 (use that for my Acer Cloudbook). Also what's up with right-click on Chromebooks, weird ways.
  - btschaegg 9y ago
    > Does ChromeOS by default implement something like TLP? I would assume the default system does power management quite well (at least on my device it does), so if you're running a chroot that shouldn't matter too much. If you boot your own system I'm not sure, though, I guess the best one can do is try. If you follow the instructions to set up an Arch Linux[1] boot system for your device for example, it will most likely just copy the ChromeOS kernel over, so I would assume the support also depends on the device's system... [1]: https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/ https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/
    - ge96 9y ago
      Arch linux?! Whaaaaa haha, you think I have a brain to follow directions! Anyway thanks for your time. I can't seem to find 8GB chromebooks, they might not exist yet and when they do expensive oh well. Quit being poor is what I keep saying to myself. "Hey buddy why don't you snap out of it and quit being poor?" haha.
      - btschaegg 9y ago
        To clarify: I'm not suggesting you have to use Arch; pick whatever suits you most :-) I only wanted to point out that they don't have their own kernels for some devices, which indicates that it isn't practical to use a completely self-compiled kernel for whatever reason (I would assume there are some crucial blob drivers). Good luck with your setup!
        ge96 9y ago
        At some point it does seem more effort than it's worth, you know how about you budget and save to get a decent computer. yeah anyway thanks for the information