15 ms·

How we turn $199 Chromebooks into Ubuntu-based code learning machines for kids

492 points by mojombo 12y ago

thebiglebrewski 12y ago
Awesome! Reminds me of this article on my blog http://blog.zfeldman.com/2013-10-05-setting-up-a-chromebook-development-laptop/ http://blog.zfeldman.com/2013-10-05-setting-up-a-chromebook-...
- thebiglebrewski 12y ago
  Also, I totally faced the same problems which is why my Chromebook is basically bricked now - when people press space all of the changes are erased...there needs to be a more user friendly way to make this process work. I'd be interested in collaborating on this process perhaps, shoot me an e-mail at zach (at) nycda (dot) com
  - mojombo 12y ago
    Great post! I'll definitely take you up on the offer, thanks!
bnejad 12y ago
Cool project but sublime text is not free software and a nag screen isn't exactly fun to see quite often especially for kids.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Also if you want to be taken serious you shouldn't be advising people to use a trial version for free without paying. I guess you can legally say you're trying it out for any amount of time but it's still unethical.
  - mojombo 12y ago
    These are both fair points, and we'd like to offer free Sublime Text licenses to recipients of our laptops, I just haven't had time yet to explore the best way to make that happen. Once Atom has a competent Linux version, we'll likely switch to installing that instead, as it's open source but still very friendly for novice developers.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - catern 12y ago
      Why not just use Gedit or Geany or any of the other many free software text editors available on Linux?
      - adrianmalacoda 12y ago
        Probably the same reason they're using Ubuntu and Chrome: the alternatives, while free, aren't fashionable enough.
        Igglyboo 12y ago
        Except Ubuntu and Chrome are both really good products while still being fashionable. I'd use Sublime any day of the week over Gedit even if it wasn't "cool"
        digisign 12y ago
        Gedit is pretty bare-bones and not really a programmers editor despite a few features in that direction. Geany, on the other hand is everything a beginner needs and without proprietary concerns.
    - jcastro 12y ago
      Check this out for a nice Ubuntu package of it: https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/ubuntu/atom https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/ubuntu/atom You probably don't want to depend on a PPA, but it's a place to start.
- ejr 12y ago
  If you're on OSX, there's Lime Text, which is Open Source http://limetext.org http://limetext.org . Linux cross compile is apparently working and a Windows version is in the works as well. https://github.com/limetext/lime/wiki/Goals https://github.com/limetext/lime/wiki/Goals
  - b409ba0801cd21 12y ago
    I checked on the status of Lime Text recently, and it is clearly not ready for prime time.
- mixmastamyk 12y ago
  That's what I came to say as well. I would suggest using Geany, it is great editor especially for beginners and in the debian/ubuntu repos. Not to mention, you should use Chromium rather than Chrome.
  - derengel 12y ago
    Chromium on Ubuntu 14.04 is lagging versions behind Chrome, even Debian stable has a version of chromium newer than 14.04.
pgeorgi 12y ago
Getting rid of the nag screen is explained here: https://johnlewis.ie/how-to-make-seabios-the-default-on-your-acer-c720/ https://johnlewis.ie/how-to-make-seabios-the-default-on-your... Since this _totally_ undermines the security concept, some dis-assembly is required (open the case, turn a screw, close the case), which is described in the chromeos developer documentation
- mojombo 12y ago
  Yeah, I saw this technique, but it requires violating the warranty (opening the case), and we'd really like kids to be able to get their laptops fixed for free if something goes wrong. Still great that it's possible to do, and can make a fun project for kids with our laptops.
imaffett 12y ago
(disclosure: I'm an Intel employee) I love the C720. My dad got me one for xmas, and himself. I used crouton to install Ubuntu, but like your approach better. I work on the Intel XDK team and am pushing the C720 as a great development machine since we provide cloud based builds for hybrid apps. You should look into the XDK for Code Starter https://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/tools https://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/tools
- mojombo 12y ago
  Crouton is pretty nice, and I experimented with that approach as well. A big reason we chose dual-boot is to give kids a playground in which they can really explore their laptops. I fondly remember the joy of installing every operating system I could get my hands on, and a full, independent install of Ubuntu demonstrates that this is possible. Thanks for the tip on XDK, I'll give that a look!
  - bachmeier 12y ago
    One other thing that I've learned the hard way with Crouton is that it's too easy for kids to delete the Ubuntu partition. It's doubly true when several kids use it.
    - e12e 12y ago
      I have fond memories of when we got our Amiga 2000. Must have been around 1986 or so (which would've made me 7 years old). My oldest brother spent half a day installing the OS onto the gigantic 40 MB scsi hard drive. When he was finally done, I spent about half an hour managing to bork the entire system, so he had to do a full reinstall... good times. Still remember he told me that "it shouldn't have been possible to do that." -- by witch he meant that while it wasn't much of a surprise that'd I'd mucked up the install -- it shouldn't have been possible to do it the way I did. Still don't remember what I did, just that it involved a lot of dragging and clicking. I doubt I'd be able to do the same thing today ;-)
- tootie 12y ago
  If developer mode for ChromeOS gives you shell access, what do you gain by installing an Ubuntu partition?
tokenizerrr 12y ago
I got an ARM chromebook, and one of the biggest downsides is that I cannot run Sublime Text. Very disappointing there is no ARM build.
- sbuccini 12y ago
  This was a huge problem for me as well. If I couldn't apt-get something, I was stuck. Also, it was hard for me to install things locally since my directories were all mucked up from the hacky installation. It ended up being more trouble than it was worth.
  - mojombo 12y ago
    The Intel Celeron processor is what finally made me interested in the latest Chromebooks. For development, ARM is still a pretty painful thing to have to deal with.
- malkia 12y ago
  I can't use OpenGL on my croutonized ARM ChromeBook. I've installed ARCH on it, but still can't get proper OpenGL support there. No problems with my intel based ones (HP Chromebook, HP Chromebox, and ACER c710).
angersock 12y ago
It's good to see Minecraft mentioned--a friend of mine recently ran a two-day Saturday class on beginning programming in Python, using Minecraft on Raspberry pis. Kids had a lot of fun making functions to do cool things in Minecraft. Gamedev is probably the most rewarding way to learn programming.
- mojombo 12y ago
  That's rad. Minecraft is such a great gateway for getting kids into programming, it's awesome to see educators taking advantage of that. Does your friend have their curriculum available anywhere? I'd love to take a look at how they ran it.
  - willstrimling 12y ago
    I'd also like to see the curriculum!
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      mewtoo^w me too
dshankar 12y ago
I quite like the work you've done here! Most computers in a school are ill-equipped for programming needs. I'm a bit concerned that this laptop is designed with an experienced programmer in mind. I don't think the *nix Terminal is friendly to noobs, considering it comes with no safety nets. Additionally, a teacher who is unfamiliar with Ubuntu is likely to have a hard time helping students. I tweeted a few more thoughts here: https://twitter.com/dshankar/timelines/497091774792228864 https://twitter.com/dshankar/timelines/497091774792228864 In it's current state, perhaps this laptop would be better suited at college students who are already familiar with the basics? At middle school/high school, students & teachers need a more friendly introduction into the programming world, not the real & scary one that is modern day Linux. However at the college level, students need tools that will prepare them for the industry and Codestarter packages all the tools one will likely use.
- mojombo 12y ago
  Thanks! We're targeting an age range of 7-17 years old, and distributing these laptops to kids that are attending learn-to-code programs like CoderDojo. For the very young, most will choose to boot ChromeOS and use online programming tools like Scratch, which is totally great. Installing Ubuntu gives more advanced kids a place to go further, with no limitations, and that's why we do it.
  - dshankar 12y ago
    That makes sense. Considering how popular Chromebooks are becoming, this could be quite valuable for schools.
- mdellabitta 12y ago
  Why do you think that modern Linux is "real & scary"? They're installing Scratch, isn't that the opposite of scary?
- TheCowboy 12y ago
  Another thing to consider is if kids did something bad from the command line to catastrophically mess things up, it's easy to wipe the drive and do a fresh install. That itself is an invaluable learning experience. Knowing that breaking the software does not break the computer only helps pique a child's curiosity. (I first installed Slackware Linux when I was 12.) Exposure to the command line at an early age never hurts, as long as it doesn't get in the way.
sspiff 12y ago
I'm wondering, technically you're supposed to buy Sublime Text. Are you just running the (infinite) trial version of Sublime, are you purchasing a license for every laptop, or do you have some kind of sponsoring by the guy behind Sublime? Same question goes for Minecraft.
- mojombo 12y ago
  I'd love to offer free licenses of ST and am working on a way to do that. Until then, the trial will suffice for a lot of kids, and pre-installing it means they can easily try it out. But yes, a better long-term solution is needed.
  - jck 12y ago
    Github's atom might be a good long-term solution when it becomes more stable.
    - mojombo 12y ago
      Absolutely, and I mentioned that in a different comment. I'd love to provide Atom on our laptops.
cpursley 12y ago
Or do it the easy way without messing up the bootloader and Os: Set them up with Nitrous.io and get right to coding.
- mojombo 12y ago
  Yep, and still totally possible by just booting into ChromeOS and firing up Chrome. But we want these kids to have the opportunity to explore a full operating system and see what makes the machine tick. It's also really important to us that kids can learn to program without a full-time internet connection (not all of our recipients have internet at home), and Ubuntu allows for that.
drewg123 12y ago
For the driver problem: You should look into DKMS. That's a better stop-gap than holding back the kernel modules. What DKMS does is to re-compile your kernel module each time the kernel is updated. It can also move aside kernel modules with the same name in the base kernel. See http://linux.dell.com/dkms/manpage.html http://linux.dell.com/dkms/manpage.html
- mojombo 12y ago
  I did come across DKMS during my research on solving the problem, and spent some time trying to figure out how to get it set up, but fizzled out in my attempts to get it working. Do you know of any more extensive tutorials on the matter? Real-world examples would also be hugely helpful. I couldn't find much. Thanks!
  - drewg123 12y ago
    Arch linux has a decent tutorial: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_S... As for a simple example.. At a previous job, I did dkms support for a driver. Grab https://www.myricom.com/pub/Myri10GE/myri10ge-linux.1.5.3.p5.tgz https://www.myricom.com/pub/Myri10GE/myri10ge-linux.1.5.3.p5... & look at dkms.conf and read linux/README.dkms For more complex examples, look at zfs-on-linux. I know that is also how nvidia packages their hybrid binary blob drivers.
    - efuquen 12y ago
      I really love Arch, even though I don't use it on a daily basis anymore the community wiki is the best resource I've found for guides on how to do a large number of tasks with the kernel that can work in most other distros.
yeukhon 12y ago
Do people remember Edubuntu? Maybe there should be a version called Codebuntu.
- mojombo 12y ago
  That would be amazing, and it's something I'd love to pursue in the long run. It seems a natural evolution of our current approach.
rglover 12y ago
Hell yeah! This is a great initiative. By university, many students have already set their minds against a career in tech. We need to reach kids earlier, when they are motivated by curiosity instead of social pressures. This came up the other day. A 19 year old kid came to my door working for the electric company. We ended up talking a bit and he asked what I did. I explained I'm a designer/developer and I work from home. For him, that was a total mind blow and he explained how he always wanted to be a game developer. I suggested that he should try and that his current job was just a temporary thing he could use to invest in getting better. The thing that bothered me, though, was that he didn't even think that he could do that, purely based on where he was from and what he saw around him (he alluded to being from the south side of Chicago). Stuff like Codestarter is a great step in the direction toward teaching kids of any background that they can do this stuff, just like everyone else. Personally, I'd like to see something like this but with a more down-to-earth "here's what they told you and here's why it's wrong" lesson up front.
- mojombo 12y ago
  That's a great anecdote, and you've brought up one of our primary hypotheses. A few weeks ago I attended a CoderDojo event in Virginia to deliver our first batch of Codestarter laptops, and it's always amazing to see the demographics. Mostly kids under 12, 50/50 boys/girls and this event was about 90% African American. Seeing the diversity at this age and comparing with the makeup of the professional software industry paints a pretty interesting picture. You can read about the event and see some photos here: http://blog.codestarter.org/post/92559298800/first-delivery-of-codestarter-laptops http://blog.codestarter.org/post/92559298800/first-delivery-...
  - johnchristopher 12y ago
    I am from Europe so pardon me if I totally missed the point but how is 90% african american considered 'diverse' ?
    - bpodgursky 12y ago
      To be a tad cynical, in the US, "diverse" is often a synonym for non-white.
kleiba 12y ago
Sorry for my lack of knowledge, but will this leave ChromeOS side-by-side with Ubuntu? If so, is this because it's technically not possible to only run Ubuntu, or because of other (legal, warranty, etc.) issues, or simply by choice? Thanks.
- mojombo 12y ago
  Our installer will leave you with the ability to boot either ChromeOS or Ubuntu. It is possible to wipe ChromeOS completely and boot just to Ubuntu, if that is your goal.
  - ameen 12y ago
    Are there any driver issues with a clean Ubuntu 14.04 install? (the post had mentioned some issues with the touchpad)
- bluedino 12y ago
  You can install Ubuntu all by itself, it's quite easy: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/764181-how-to-install-linux-on-an-acer-c720-chromebook http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/764181-how-to-install-l... It's now my default suggestion for a cheap Linux laptop instead of buying a used Dell/Lenovo model.
html5web 12y ago
You can buy Toshiba Satellite 15.6" with 4GB Memory and 500 GB hard drive for $229 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-satellite-15-6-laptop-intel-celeron-4gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-jet-black/7351008.p?id=1219265947912&skuId=7351008&st=categoryid$pcmcat247400050000&cp=1&lp=1 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-satellite-15-6-laptop-in...
- sspiff 12y ago
  This made me think, at what scale is this project happening? I'm guessing a lot of companies would be willing to give you discounts or perhaps even free machines (buy one, get one free?) to get the positive PR by being associated with this kind of thing.
  - html5web 12y ago
    I was also surprised by this price!
  - mojombo 12y ago
    We've currently funded 146 laptops over the last few months, but we'd love to be distributing thousands every year and are currently in conversations with a variety of companies to see if we can get sponsorships going. That would potentially allow us more flexibility around what machines we use.
    - lukeschlather 12y ago
      Are the low-end Chromebooks subsidized by Google? I'm surprised there aren't Ubuntu models at similar price points.
      - mojombo 12y ago
        I've heard rumors that this is the case (at least for the Acer C720), though I can't confirm it. I did call Acer to speak with a sales rep and learned that Acer's cost to produce is nearly $250 (if their information can be trusted), so it seems that someone is subsidizing the cost.
Sephr 12y ago
I think crouton is a much better-integrated experience than dual booting. You can set up the Ubuntu chroot exactly the same way you have in this, but you don't have to reboot if you want to watch Netflix or use Chrome OS. With the crouton integration extension (synchronized clipboard, open links from Ubuntu in Chrome OS), Chrome OS will feel like "just another app" (even though Ubuntu is the "app"/chroot). Another benefit of using crouton (with an SD card) is that if the user accidentally hits space during the boot warning and developer mode is disabled, they can simply re-enable developer mode and nothing is lost in the Ubuntu chroot. Unfortunately, the C720 has an extremely slow SD reader, so you'd probably want to go with the Dell Chromebook 11 (same processor, ~90MB/s SD reader, better battery and build quality, $70 more) if you wanted to go this route.
- mojombo 12y ago
  It is very nicely integrated, and that may very well be the best method for a more experienced developer. For our recipients, the simplicity of the dual-boot setup is nice and makes it easy to understand what's going on under the hood.
afarrell 12y ago
I know I can donate, but why can't I buy one through you? If you've already done the effort to develop the product, why not sell it to the "savvy developer looking for an inexpensive laptop to travel with", reduce your per-unit costs, and make some profit you can pour back into the project?
- mojombo 12y ago
  We'd very much like to, but we're only a few months into this endeavor, and we want to make sure that our product is really polished before we start selling them in quantity. We'll get there! In the meantime, if you're willing to put $300 towards a ready-made Codestarter laptop, I'd be game to put one together for you and have any proceeds go towards the program. If you're interested, email me: tom@codestarter.org.
- ytjohn 12y ago
  Their main goal is to get these laptops into the hands of children that can't afford them. They are making the script to do this available for free along with a tutorial. A "savvy developer" could pick the laptop up at Best Buy, Amazon, or Walmart for $200 and run this script. I'm actually doing this to my C270 right now. I've ran it with Crouton up until recently. When I first did it, the Ubuntu side could see the sound card and I could access usb serial ports to program my radios. But after some update to ChromeOS, that stopped working. So having a full dual-boot setup would be really good for me, and this script looks like one of the easiest methods I've seen. I suppose they could do a program similiar to what OLPC did where you paid the cost of two devices. One would go to you and one would go to a child. I see he suggested a $300 price tag, would is like buying 1.5 C270s, which would be a very similar scheme. I am of course, keeping in mind that they also have to compensate people for their time to do the install. I assume it can't be automated, at least without opening the case and voiding the warranty.
luckyno13 12y ago
Im not a kid but I may look into this to learn a bit of code myself.
- mojombo 12y ago
  That's amazing! Let me know if I can help in any way.
  - luckyno13 12y ago
    Coming from an almost totally Windows experience, how restrictive is 2GB of RAM going to be in Ubuntu, because Im not even sure a Windows machine would function on 2GB these days haha.
    - mojombo 12y ago
      For browsing the web and simple development tasks, 2GB is sufficient. More is better, but if you're working on a budget, then 2GB will get the job done.
lukebennett 12y ago
I have an Acer C720 myself but put ElementaryOS on instead of Ubuntu - runs like a dream and looks great to boot. A good thing about the C720 is that the SSD is upgradeable fairly simply[0], though it's easy enough to stick an SD card in as a stopgap. I picked up a refurb (not that you'd know to look at it, feels brand new) for £130. Wouldn't get an 8.5hr lightweight laptop for anything close to that elsewhere. [0] http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/acer-chromebook-c720-ssd-upgrade-mydigitalssd-m-2-ngff-128gb-sc2-ssd-worlds-easiest-upgrade/ http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/acer-chro...
- cnaut 12y ago
  Does ElementaryOS run better than Ubuntu on it?
  - lukebennett 12y ago
    I can't say for sure unfortunately as my only previous experience of Ubuntu on a Chromebook was via Crouton on a Samsung which, being ARM, was somewhat limited in what you could do with it. Elementary on the other hand I run natively via dual boot. It's nice and slick, and I much prefer Pantheon to Unity, but I can't really give you a direct comparison on this device.
    - listic 12y ago
      > being ARM, was somewhat limited in what you could do with it What are the limitations and where do they come from? I suspected something like that could be true, but not exactly sure.
  - girvo 12y ago
    I don't have a Chromebook, but I do have an HP netbook running an AMD APU. Elementary OS does run better than Ubuntu on it, but granted, it has a decent video card. I've no idea why it was so much smoother in regular usage, but it is!
- listic 12y ago
  Should I be able to put just any mSATA SSD in it? Like Samsung 840 EVO, which go up to 1 TB in volume? What about the other Chromebooks?
hardmath123 12y ago
I wanted to mention that you can install Scratch 2.0 offline—it runs as an Adobe Air app. See http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/ http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/ The offline editor also lets you import extensions, which means that if you're adventurous, you can hook up Scratch to your NXT, your Arduino, your LEAP Motion, your Sphero, your Kinect, anything. That should be pretty exciting for new coders. A friend of mine's speaking about this at the Scratch conference now-ish.
dharma1 12y ago
One of our sdk devs broke his mb air and got one of these as a temporary replacement. Seemed to work really well, used it over a week long sprint. Wish they came with more RAM though
- Glyptodon 12y ago
  The original Acer version had 4GB. I tried to buy one a month or two ofter they were released, but 4gb versions ended up being sold out because of the switch to the current 2GB version. So I never ended up getting one.
keithpeter 12y ago
OA says Java is being included. Would processing (processing.org) make a good added extra? Has a lot of example 'sketches'. Has audio as well as graphical code examples. Lots of example projects around, some ambitious[1], exhibit Web sites, plenty teaching material available, peer reviewed/published stuff (might help with school committees). Comes with an integrated IDE and docs. Might act as a bridge between the simplified graphical environments and Java/Eclipse while developing code concepts further. [1] https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-datavis/ https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-dat...
owenversteeg 12y ago
I'm a mentor for a Lego robotics team and have been for years - this year's season will mark my eighth year of Lego Robotics. I love to help the kids learn and I even try to teach them (to some extent) how to code. This looks great, and I'd much rather get four of these for my team than a new laptop for myself. However, it's crucial to have Mindstorms software, which only runs in a VM [0]. Can you test if it's at all possible (speed-wise) to run the NXT-G software in a VM? I don't care if it's a bit sluggish or if it takes five minutes to start as long as it's usable. If so, this would be absolutely revolutionary. So many teams don't have enough computers or have to share one computer. If you don't have the software or an NXT, I'd love to buy one from you guys, test it out, and evangelize it to everyone I meet. My kids would go crazy for another computer. [0] http://superuser.com/questions/364864/is-it-possible-to-run-nxt-g-software-under-linux-using-wine http://superuser.com/questions/364864/is-it-possible-to-run-...
tmathmeyer 12y ago
I'll probably get a bunch of hate for this, but I honestly think this is a bad idea. My main concerns are the phrases "It must run Ubuntu", "It must have Google Chrome as the default browser", and "It must support Minecraft", and I have minor concerns with the solutions to the other statements. * Ubuntu: why ubuntu? because it is _popular_? that's a bad reason, and it's magnified that this is supposed to be a teaching tool. How can you justify teaching kids to do something because it's popular? * Must have Chrome: I read this and laughed. As a fairly large supporter of the free software foundation, I am frankly appalled that you want to use chrome when there are many better and more free alternatives. There is of course firefox, which is free, but if your real desire is the webkit rendering engine or v8, then there is always chromium or DWB. * Minecraft: I play minecraft, and I think it's fun. I write mods, and I run servers. But to include video games on an educational computer is repulsive and you should be ashamed. So what if kids like it? Kids like refined sugar too, lets just give that to students as a way for them to enjoy food. Some other points: The wide variety of programming languages is good, but the list you provided is noticeably lacking C (the most widely used language) or any systems language. Programming is about much more than stupid hello world programs and writing silly kiddie games, and should be treated as such. I also noticed a lack of purely functional languages, which bothers me more than I can effectively express in words. The lack of internet is good, but you completely missed the existence of man pages and virtually all compilers work offline as well. Having a great editor is fantastic, and I use sublime text (I even paid $70 for the license!), but as many people have said, you shouldn't. That $70 is much better spent on better hardware for the computer, and shipping with unlicensed software is wrong. Vim and Emacs are both more than capable of doing EVERYTHING sublime does and are much lighter weight, and free. Including the paragraph about the 'custom sidebar' is laughable. Aside from the fact that I dislike Unity and that the sidebar can be configured by students already, I don't think it's appropriate to coerce students into using the software YOU want them too. That flies so hard in the face of the unix philosophy. the function keys are easy to remap. I suggest looking into sxhkd as a replacement for the bloated tools you listed. It's free software and can be found on github. It is written by the same author as bspwm. developer mode screen: so reformat the laptop. I did it with arch and it works fine and has no 'scary screen' as you put it. *trackpad support is not the responsibility of the kernel, and a kernel update will not in fact remove support. This problem can easily be solved by distributing modified versions of the apt-get remote upstream lists. My final remark is that every time I hear someone refer to themselves as a 'coder' rather than a programmer, I die a bit inside. Please take this profession seriously and don't encourage what are commonly know as 'skript kiddies'.
dpcan 12y ago
Everything was going fine UNTIL.... one accidental press of the space bar and you wipe everything out! Yikes. :) Still looks great, but something tells me this would be in my kids' hands for about 3 days until everything accidentally got wiped out.
- mojombo 12y ago
  To be fair, pressing SPACE gets you a 2nd confirmation screen that must also be accepted, before your fate is sealed. And even then it just places you back into normal ChromeOS mode. The installer can easily be re-run to get you back to Codestarter-factory-settings, and is actually a pretty nice learning experience all on its own. But, yeah, those are all rationalizations for what is a non-ideal experience. I'm hoping to find a good solution to the problem.
  - dpcan 12y ago
    But what about all your saved work? Reinstalling and losing everything could be a real tear jerker for kids. In fact, it's unlikely they would start over, possibly resulting in giving up on it completely given the emotional side effects. Maybe the solution should have a cloud backup option built in that uses Dropbox or something to clone all your data. Then at least you are just a couple-hour restore away from being back online.
- zanny 12y ago
  The mechanisms to completely wreck Windows are simpler than the same process on Linux. At least on Ubuntu, you need to enter a root password to delete /usr. On Windows until really recent versions deleting /Windows/sys32 was as easy a few explorer clicks. But even then, you can still just delete a few arbitrary DLLs and wreck the system all the same.
  - dpcan 12y ago
    Create a guest login for the kids and they can hardly mess up anything. There's a big difference between hitting space bar and OK and losing everything, and finding a way to delete the windows system folders, considering they are usually hidden to begin with.
ck2 12y ago
Here is a refurbished C720 for $130 if that helps http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14ghz-dual-core-processor http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14g...
Aissen 12y ago
The problems exposed show that being a distributor is harder than it seems; > The “developer mode” boot screen is scary and unhelpful. Then put your own bootloader ? You can do this by accessing the hardware: http://www.chromium.org/_/rsrc/1381990807648/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/acer-c720-chromebook/c720-chromebook-annotated-innards.png http://www.chromium.org/_/rsrc/1381990807648/chromium-os/dev... and removing the write-protect screw. Of course the chromeOS team is making sure it's not easy to bypass their security features, and it has the (desired?) side effect of preventing this kind of mass-scale re-purposing. > Kernel updates wipe out the custom kernel modules. Then put your own kernel. Being a distributor means taking responsibility about what's running on your hardware. Make your own repositories, recompile the kernel(you can even automate it), and while you're at it, add all those packages you're installing in the script(hello .deb package downloaded over http), and VERIFY THEIR SIGNATURES with apt. About the kernel, you could also make sure the upstream kernel supports the trackpad, and then make sure the (intermediary) distributors pick up the associated patches, so it's a burden off your plate in the mid/long term. You could also probably pay Canonical (or anyone else) to do this job.
- DennisP 12y ago
  Where is the write-protect screw in that picture?
  - kps 12y ago
    7. Information for all available devices can be found under http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... Edit: re the GP post, the design is described here: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/developer-mode http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/d...
ff_ 12y ago
When I bought it this Acer C720 was like an experiment, at first I was skeptical. Now it's my main dev machine: its very little weight enables me to carry it wherever I go, the battery lasts 18h (18 HOURS, CRAZY!) if I read only PDFs, the 2gb of ram and the dual core are just perfect (but not tempting about running virtual machines on it), and with the SSD it performs better than more powerful machines with HDs. Oh, and I just love the 12" format. (Of course I have thrown away ChromeOS, now I run elementary OS)
- 32bitkid 12y ago
  I, too, got a acer c720 as an experiment, and it also has earned it's way into being my primary machine. Not only for casual browsing, but development too. I use ChomeOS in developer mode and chromebrew (http://skycocker.github.io/chromebrew/ http://skycocker.github.io/chromebrew/) and then some installing binaries and building other dependencies. My current projects include node, ruby, java, and golang. Some days I miss having sublime, but Caret is a mostly competent stand-in. I would love to get one of the dell chromebook but they are next to impossible to find.
- ameen 12y ago
  How good is development on it (& elementary OS). I've only used Ubuntu/OSX for serious development. Does the 2GB RAM cause any issues?
  - ff_ 12y ago
    I think it's just perfect: the zero-bloat of elementary OS allows me to get my multitasking work done flawlessly, keeping firefox+sublime+atom+a-lot-of-terminals open without a glitch. Also the dual core Celeron is fast in compiling things for elementary dev (of course just don't think to run Gentoo on it), while moderates the desire to play games. About the 2GB RAM: as devs we are used to systems with 8/16 GB today; if you can accept that even RAM is a finite thing so it isn't an issue. Anyway I try to preserve my SSD, so I keep my ~/Downloads folder in RAM, and at first I disabled the swap volume: the system just freezed too often. So I re-enabled the swap, but I reduced the swappiness and I plan to move it on an SD card.
rrss1122 12y ago
Why must it run Ubuntu? Especially if you're gonna turn around and make Chrome (not Chromium) the default browser anyway? Is it for the Minecraft (which, by the way, encourages a construction mindset, not an engineering mindset, since Minecraft takes numerous liberties with the laws of physics)? That seems like the only good reason, because you can already learn to code just fine on Chrome/Chromium.
aceperry 12y ago
I have the Acer C720 and installed Linux on it. It is an excellent development machine for what it is. Cheap but sturdy, light enough to carry places that I'm afraid to bring my Chromebook Pixel, cheap enough that I wouldn't be too bothered if I were to lose it instead of the Pixel, and fast enough to do most of what I want.
listic 12y ago
Are you sure you won't run into limitations of 2GB RAM? That's the thing that worries me most about these Chromebooks, if the SSD is indeed expandable. I routinely run over 2GB on 32-bit Ubuntu with regular office and internet browsing tasks; sometimes over 4GB.
cashoil 12y ago
In programming there are doers and thinkers. Thinkers also write code, but they have a perfect understanding - breadth and depth - of the application, the environment, the tools they use, the purpose... They have full autonomy and initiate things. They have passion and basically do not need any formal education in CS. Doers receive requirements and implement using the framework they have being told to use. Most people who have been told to do CS because it is financially rewarding or a good job end up in this category. It is any-office-job for them.

492 points by mojombo 12y ago

Awesome! Reminds me of this article on my blog http://blog.zfeldman.com/2013-10-05-setting-up-a-chromebook-development-laptop/ http://blog.zfeldman.com/2013-10-05-setting-up-a-chromebook-...

thebiglebrewski 12y ago
Also, I totally faced the same problems which is why my Chromebook is basically bricked now - when people press space all of the changes are erased...there needs to be a more user friendly way to make this process work. I'd be interested in collaborating on this process perhaps, shoot me an e-mail at zach (at) nycda (dot) com
- mojombo 12y ago
  Great post! I'll definitely take you up on the offer, thanks!

bnejad 12y ago

Cool project but sublime text is not free software and a nag screen isn't exactly fun to see quite often especially for kids.

Igglyboo 12y ago
Also if you want to be taken serious you shouldn't be advising people to use a trial version for free without paying. I guess you can legally say you're trying it out for any amount of time but it's still unethical.
- mojombo 12y ago
  These are both fair points, and we'd like to offer free Sublime Text licenses to recipients of our laptops, I just haven't had time yet to explore the best way to make that happen. Once Atom has a competent Linux version, we'll likely switch to installing that instead, as it's open source but still very friendly for novice developers.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - catern 12y ago
    Why not just use Gedit or Geany or any of the other many free software text editors available on Linux?
    - adrianmalacoda 12y ago
      Probably the same reason they're using Ubuntu and Chrome: the alternatives, while free, aren't fashionable enough.
      - Igglyboo 12y ago
        Except Ubuntu and Chrome are both really good products while still being fashionable. I'd use Sublime any day of the week over Gedit even if it wasn't "cool"
        digisign 12y ago
        Gedit is pretty bare-bones and not really a programmers editor despite a few features in that direction. Geany, on the other hand is everything a beginner needs and without proprietary concerns.
  - jcastro 12y ago
    Check this out for a nice Ubuntu package of it: https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/ubuntu/atom https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/ubuntu/atom You probably don't want to depend on a PPA, but it's a place to start.
ejr 12y ago
If you're on OSX, there's Lime Text, which is Open Source http://limetext.org http://limetext.org . Linux cross compile is apparently working and a Windows version is in the works as well. https://github.com/limetext/lime/wiki/Goals https://github.com/limetext/lime/wiki/Goals
- b409ba0801cd21 12y ago
  I checked on the status of Lime Text recently, and it is clearly not ready for prime time.
mixmastamyk 12y ago
That's what I came to say as well. I would suggest using Geany, it is great editor especially for beginners and in the debian/ubuntu repos. Not to mention, you should use Chromium rather than Chrome.
- derengel 12y ago
  Chromium on Ubuntu 14.04 is lagging versions behind Chrome, even Debian stable has a version of chromium newer than 14.04.

pgeorgi 12y ago

Getting rid of the nag screen is explained here: https://johnlewis.ie/how-to-make-seabios-the-default-on-your-acer-c720/ https://johnlewis.ie/how-to-make-seabios-the-default-on-your... Since this _totally_ undermines the security concept, some dis-assembly is required (open the case, turn a screw, close the case), which is described in the chromeos developer documentation

mojombo 12y ago
Yeah, I saw this technique, but it requires violating the warranty (opening the case), and we'd really like kids to be able to get their laptops fixed for free if something goes wrong. Still great that it's possible to do, and can make a fun project for kids with our laptops.

imaffett 12y ago

(disclosure: I'm an Intel employee) I love the C720. My dad got me one for xmas, and himself. I used crouton to install Ubuntu, but like your approach better. I work on the Intel XDK team and am pushing the C720 as a great development machine since we provide cloud based builds for hybrid apps. You should look into the XDK for Code Starter https://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/tools https://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/tools

mojombo 12y ago
Crouton is pretty nice, and I experimented with that approach as well. A big reason we chose dual-boot is to give kids a playground in which they can really explore their laptops. I fondly remember the joy of installing every operating system I could get my hands on, and a full, independent install of Ubuntu demonstrates that this is possible. Thanks for the tip on XDK, I'll give that a look!
- bachmeier 12y ago
  One other thing that I've learned the hard way with Crouton is that it's too easy for kids to delete the Ubuntu partition. It's doubly true when several kids use it.
  - e12e 12y ago
    I have fond memories of when we got our Amiga 2000. Must have been around 1986 or so (which would've made me 7 years old). My oldest brother spent half a day installing the OS onto the gigantic 40 MB scsi hard drive. When he was finally done, I spent about half an hour managing to bork the entire system, so he had to do a full reinstall... good times. Still remember he told me that "it shouldn't have been possible to do that." -- by witch he meant that while it wasn't much of a surprise that'd I'd mucked up the install -- it shouldn't have been possible to do it the way I did. Still don't remember what I did, just that it involved a lot of dragging and clicking. I doubt I'd be able to do the same thing today ;-)
tootie 12y ago
If developer mode for ChromeOS gives you shell access, what do you gain by installing an Ubuntu partition?

tokenizerrr 12y ago

I got an ARM chromebook, and one of the biggest downsides is that I cannot run Sublime Text. Very disappointing there is no ARM build.

sbuccini 12y ago
This was a huge problem for me as well. If I couldn't apt-get something, I was stuck. Also, it was hard for me to install things locally since my directories were all mucked up from the hacky installation. It ended up being more trouble than it was worth.
- mojombo 12y ago
  The Intel Celeron processor is what finally made me interested in the latest Chromebooks. For development, ARM is still a pretty painful thing to have to deal with.
malkia 12y ago
I can't use OpenGL on my croutonized ARM ChromeBook. I've installed ARCH on it, but still can't get proper OpenGL support there. No problems with my intel based ones (HP Chromebook, HP Chromebox, and ACER c710).

angersock 12y ago

It's good to see Minecraft mentioned--a friend of mine recently ran a two-day Saturday class on beginning programming in Python, using Minecraft on Raspberry pis. Kids had a lot of fun making functions to do cool things in Minecraft. Gamedev is probably the most rewarding way to learn programming.

mojombo 12y ago
That's rad. Minecraft is such a great gateway for getting kids into programming, it's awesome to see educators taking advantage of that. Does your friend have their curriculum available anywhere? I'd love to take a look at how they ran it.
- willstrimling 12y ago
  I'd also like to see the curriculum!
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    mewtoo^w me too

dshankar 12y ago

I quite like the work you've done here! Most computers in a school are ill-equipped for programming needs. I'm a bit concerned that this laptop is designed with an experienced programmer in mind. I don't think the *nix Terminal is friendly to noobs, considering it comes with no safety nets. Additionally, a teacher who is unfamiliar with Ubuntu is likely to have a hard time helping students. I tweeted a few more thoughts here: https://twitter.com/dshankar/timelines/497091774792228864 https://twitter.com/dshankar/timelines/497091774792228864 In it's current state, perhaps this laptop would be better suited at college students who are already familiar with the basics? At middle school/high school, students & teachers need a more friendly introduction into the programming world, not the real & scary one that is modern day Linux. However at the college level, students need tools that will prepare them for the industry and Codestarter packages all the tools one will likely use.

mojombo 12y ago
Thanks! We're targeting an age range of 7-17 years old, and distributing these laptops to kids that are attending learn-to-code programs like CoderDojo. For the very young, most will choose to boot ChromeOS and use online programming tools like Scratch, which is totally great. Installing Ubuntu gives more advanced kids a place to go further, with no limitations, and that's why we do it.
- dshankar 12y ago
  That makes sense. Considering how popular Chromebooks are becoming, this could be quite valuable for schools.
mdellabitta 12y ago
Why do you think that modern Linux is "real & scary"? They're installing Scratch, isn't that the opposite of scary?
TheCowboy 12y ago
Another thing to consider is if kids did something bad from the command line to catastrophically mess things up, it's easy to wipe the drive and do a fresh install. That itself is an invaluable learning experience. Knowing that breaking the software does not break the computer only helps pique a child's curiosity. (I first installed Slackware Linux when I was 12.) Exposure to the command line at an early age never hurts, as long as it doesn't get in the way.

sspiff 12y ago

I'm wondering, technically you're supposed to buy Sublime Text. Are you just running the (infinite) trial version of Sublime, are you purchasing a license for every laptop, or do you have some kind of sponsoring by the guy behind Sublime? Same question goes for Minecraft.

mojombo 12y ago
I'd love to offer free licenses of ST and am working on a way to do that. Until then, the trial will suffice for a lot of kids, and pre-installing it means they can easily try it out. But yes, a better long-term solution is needed.
- jck 12y ago
  Github's atom might be a good long-term solution when it becomes more stable.
  - mojombo 12y ago
    Absolutely, and I mentioned that in a different comment. I'd love to provide Atom on our laptops.

cpursley 12y ago

Or do it the easy way without messing up the bootloader and Os: Set them up with Nitrous.io and get right to coding.

mojombo 12y ago
Yep, and still totally possible by just booting into ChromeOS and firing up Chrome. But we want these kids to have the opportunity to explore a full operating system and see what makes the machine tick. It's also really important to us that kids can learn to program without a full-time internet connection (not all of our recipients have internet at home), and Ubuntu allows for that.

drewg123 12y ago

For the driver problem: You should look into DKMS. That's a better stop-gap than holding back the kernel modules. What DKMS does is to re-compile your kernel module each time the kernel is updated. It can also move aside kernel modules with the same name in the base kernel. See http://linux.dell.com/dkms/manpage.html http://linux.dell.com/dkms/manpage.html

mojombo 12y ago
I did come across DKMS during my research on solving the problem, and spent some time trying to figure out how to get it set up, but fizzled out in my attempts to get it working. Do you know of any more extensive tutorials on the matter? Real-world examples would also be hugely helpful. I couldn't find much. Thanks!
- drewg123 12y ago
  Arch linux has a decent tutorial: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_S... As for a simple example.. At a previous job, I did dkms support for a driver. Grab https://www.myricom.com/pub/Myri10GE/myri10ge-linux.1.5.3.p5.tgz https://www.myricom.com/pub/Myri10GE/myri10ge-linux.1.5.3.p5... & look at dkms.conf and read linux/README.dkms For more complex examples, look at zfs-on-linux. I know that is also how nvidia packages their hybrid binary blob drivers.
  - efuquen 12y ago
    I really love Arch, even though I don't use it on a daily basis anymore the community wiki is the best resource I've found for guides on how to do a large number of tasks with the kernel that can work in most other distros.

yeukhon 12y ago

Do people remember Edubuntu? Maybe there should be a version called Codebuntu.

mojombo 12y ago
That would be amazing, and it's something I'd love to pursue in the long run. It seems a natural evolution of our current approach.

rglover 12y ago

Hell yeah! This is a great initiative. By university, many students have already set their minds against a career in tech. We need to reach kids earlier, when they are motivated by curiosity instead of social pressures. This came up the other day. A 19 year old kid came to my door working for the electric company. We ended up talking a bit and he asked what I did. I explained I'm a designer/developer and I work from home. For him, that was a total mind blow and he explained how he always wanted to be a game developer. I suggested that he should try and that his current job was just a temporary thing he could use to invest in getting better. The thing that bothered me, though, was that he didn't even think that he could do that, purely based on where he was from and what he saw around him (he alluded to being from the south side of Chicago). Stuff like Codestarter is a great step in the direction toward teaching kids of any background that they can do this stuff, just like everyone else. Personally, I'd like to see something like this but with a more down-to-earth "here's what they told you and here's why it's wrong" lesson up front.

mojombo 12y ago
That's a great anecdote, and you've brought up one of our primary hypotheses. A few weeks ago I attended a CoderDojo event in Virginia to deliver our first batch of Codestarter laptops, and it's always amazing to see the demographics. Mostly kids under 12, 50/50 boys/girls and this event was about 90% African American. Seeing the diversity at this age and comparing with the makeup of the professional software industry paints a pretty interesting picture. You can read about the event and see some photos here: http://blog.codestarter.org/post/92559298800/first-delivery-of-codestarter-laptops http://blog.codestarter.org/post/92559298800/first-delivery-...
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  I am from Europe so pardon me if I totally missed the point but how is 90% african american considered 'diverse' ?
  - bpodgursky 12y ago
    To be a tad cynical, in the US, "diverse" is often a synonym for non-white.

kleiba 12y ago

Sorry for my lack of knowledge, but will this leave ChromeOS side-by-side with Ubuntu? If so, is this because it's technically not possible to only run Ubuntu, or because of other (legal, warranty, etc.) issues, or simply by choice? Thanks.

mojombo 12y ago
Our installer will leave you with the ability to boot either ChromeOS or Ubuntu. It is possible to wipe ChromeOS completely and boot just to Ubuntu, if that is your goal.
- ameen 12y ago
  Are there any driver issues with a clean Ubuntu 14.04 install? (the post had mentioned some issues with the touchpad)
bluedino 12y ago
You can install Ubuntu all by itself, it's quite easy: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/764181-how-to-install-linux-on-an-acer-c720-chromebook http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/764181-how-to-install-l... It's now my default suggestion for a cheap Linux laptop instead of buying a used Dell/Lenovo model.

html5web 12y ago

You can buy Toshiba Satellite 15.6" with 4GB Memory and 500 GB hard drive for $229 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-satellite-15-6-laptop-intel-celeron-4gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-jet-black/7351008.p?id=1219265947912&skuId=7351008&st=categoryid$pcmcat247400050000&cp=1&lp=1 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-satellite-15-6-laptop-in...

sspiff 12y ago
This made me think, at what scale is this project happening? I'm guessing a lot of companies would be willing to give you discounts or perhaps even free machines (buy one, get one free?) to get the positive PR by being associated with this kind of thing.
- html5web 12y ago
  I was also surprised by this price!
- mojombo 12y ago
  We've currently funded 146 laptops over the last few months, but we'd love to be distributing thousands every year and are currently in conversations with a variety of companies to see if we can get sponsorships going. That would potentially allow us more flexibility around what machines we use.
  - lukeschlather 12y ago
    Are the low-end Chromebooks subsidized by Google? I'm surprised there aren't Ubuntu models at similar price points.
    - mojombo 12y ago
      I've heard rumors that this is the case (at least for the Acer C720), though I can't confirm it. I did call Acer to speak with a sales rep and learned that Acer's cost to produce is nearly $250 (if their information can be trusted), so it seems that someone is subsidizing the cost.

Sephr 12y ago

I think crouton is a much better-integrated experience than dual booting. You can set up the Ubuntu chroot exactly the same way you have in this, but you don't have to reboot if you want to watch Netflix or use Chrome OS. With the crouton integration extension (synchronized clipboard, open links from Ubuntu in Chrome OS), Chrome OS will feel like "just another app" (even though Ubuntu is the "app"/chroot). Another benefit of using crouton (with an SD card) is that if the user accidentally hits space during the boot warning and developer mode is disabled, they can simply re-enable developer mode and nothing is lost in the Ubuntu chroot. Unfortunately, the C720 has an extremely slow SD reader, so you'd probably want to go with the Dell Chromebook 11 (same processor, ~90MB/s SD reader, better battery and build quality, $70 more) if you wanted to go this route.

mojombo 12y ago
It is very nicely integrated, and that may very well be the best method for a more experienced developer. For our recipients, the simplicity of the dual-boot setup is nice and makes it easy to understand what's going on under the hood.

afarrell 12y ago

I know I can donate, but why can't I buy one through you? If you've already done the effort to develop the product, why not sell it to the "savvy developer looking for an inexpensive laptop to travel with", reduce your per-unit costs, and make some profit you can pour back into the project?

mojombo 12y ago
We'd very much like to, but we're only a few months into this endeavor, and we want to make sure that our product is really polished before we start selling them in quantity. We'll get there! In the meantime, if you're willing to put $300 towards a ready-made Codestarter laptop, I'd be game to put one together for you and have any proceeds go towards the program. If you're interested, email me: tom@codestarter.org.
ytjohn 12y ago
Their main goal is to get these laptops into the hands of children that can't afford them. They are making the script to do this available for free along with a tutorial. A "savvy developer" could pick the laptop up at Best Buy, Amazon, or Walmart for $200 and run this script. I'm actually doing this to my C270 right now. I've ran it with Crouton up until recently. When I first did it, the Ubuntu side could see the sound card and I could access usb serial ports to program my radios. But after some update to ChromeOS, that stopped working. So having a full dual-boot setup would be really good for me, and this script looks like one of the easiest methods I've seen. I suppose they could do a program similiar to what OLPC did where you paid the cost of two devices. One would go to you and one would go to a child. I see he suggested a $300 price tag, would is like buying 1.5 C270s, which would be a very similar scheme. I am of course, keeping in mind that they also have to compensate people for their time to do the install. I assume it can't be automated, at least without opening the case and voiding the warranty.

luckyno13 12y ago

Im not a kid but I may look into this to learn a bit of code myself.

mojombo 12y ago
That's amazing! Let me know if I can help in any way.
- luckyno13 12y ago
  Coming from an almost totally Windows experience, how restrictive is 2GB of RAM going to be in Ubuntu, because Im not even sure a Windows machine would function on 2GB these days haha.
  - mojombo 12y ago
    For browsing the web and simple development tasks, 2GB is sufficient. More is better, but if you're working on a budget, then 2GB will get the job done.

lukebennett 12y ago

I have an Acer C720 myself but put ElementaryOS on instead of Ubuntu - runs like a dream and looks great to boot. A good thing about the C720 is that the SSD is upgradeable fairly simply[0], though it's easy enough to stick an SD card in as a stopgap. I picked up a refurb (not that you'd know to look at it, feels brand new) for £130. Wouldn't get an 8.5hr lightweight laptop for anything close to that elsewhere. [0] http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/acer-chromebook-c720-ssd-upgrade-mydigitalssd-m-2-ngff-128gb-sc2-ssd-worlds-easiest-upgrade/ http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/acer-chro...

cnaut 12y ago
Does ElementaryOS run better than Ubuntu on it?
- lukebennett 12y ago
  I can't say for sure unfortunately as my only previous experience of Ubuntu on a Chromebook was via Crouton on a Samsung which, being ARM, was somewhat limited in what you could do with it. Elementary on the other hand I run natively via dual boot. It's nice and slick, and I much prefer Pantheon to Unity, but I can't really give you a direct comparison on this device.
  - listic 12y ago
    > being ARM, was somewhat limited in what you could do with it What are the limitations and where do they come from? I suspected something like that could be true, but not exactly sure.
- girvo 12y ago
  I don't have a Chromebook, but I do have an HP netbook running an AMD APU. Elementary OS does run better than Ubuntu on it, but granted, it has a decent video card. I've no idea why it was so much smoother in regular usage, but it is!
listic 12y ago
Should I be able to put just any mSATA SSD in it? Like Samsung 840 EVO, which go up to 1 TB in volume? What about the other Chromebooks?

hardmath123 12y ago

I wanted to mention that you can install Scratch 2.0 offline—it runs as an Adobe Air app. See http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/ http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/ The offline editor also lets you import extensions, which means that if you're adventurous, you can hook up Scratch to your NXT, your Arduino, your LEAP Motion, your Sphero, your Kinect, anything. That should be pretty exciting for new coders. A friend of mine's speaking about this at the Scratch conference now-ish.

dharma1 12y ago

One of our sdk devs broke his mb air and got one of these as a temporary replacement. Seemed to work really well, used it over a week long sprint. Wish they came with more RAM though

Glyptodon 12y ago
The original Acer version had 4GB. I tried to buy one a month or two ofter they were released, but 4gb versions ended up being sold out because of the switch to the current 2GB version. So I never ended up getting one.

keithpeter 12y ago

OA says Java is being included. Would processing (processing.org) make a good added extra? Has a lot of example 'sketches'. Has audio as well as graphical code examples. Lots of example projects around, some ambitious[1], exhibit Web sites, plenty teaching material available, peer reviewed/published stuff (might help with school committees). Comes with an integrated IDE and docs. Might act as a bridge between the simplified graphical environments and Java/Eclipse while developing code concepts further. [1] https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-datavis/ https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-dat...

owenversteeg 12y ago

I'm a mentor for a Lego robotics team and have been for years - this year's season will mark my eighth year of Lego Robotics. I love to help the kids learn and I even try to teach them (to some extent) how to code. This looks great, and I'd much rather get four of these for my team than a new laptop for myself. However, it's crucial to have Mindstorms software, which only runs in a VM [0]. Can you test if it's at all possible (speed-wise) to run the NXT-G software in a VM? I don't care if it's a bit sluggish or if it takes five minutes to start as long as it's usable. If so, this would be absolutely revolutionary. So many teams don't have enough computers or have to share one computer. If you don't have the software or an NXT, I'd love to buy one from you guys, test it out, and evangelize it to everyone I meet. My kids would go crazy for another computer. [0] http://superuser.com/questions/364864/is-it-possible-to-run-nxt-g-software-under-linux-using-wine http://superuser.com/questions/364864/is-it-possible-to-run-...

tmathmeyer 12y ago

I'll probably get a bunch of hate for this, but I honestly think this is a bad idea. My main concerns are the phrases "It must run Ubuntu", "It must have Google Chrome as the default browser", and "It must support Minecraft", and I have minor concerns with the solutions to the other statements. * Ubuntu: why ubuntu? because it is _popular_? that's a bad reason, and it's magnified that this is supposed to be a teaching tool. How can you justify teaching kids to do something because it's popular? * Must have Chrome: I read this and laughed. As a fairly large supporter of the free software foundation, I am frankly appalled that you want to use chrome when there are many better and more free alternatives. There is of course firefox, which is free, but if your real desire is the webkit rendering engine or v8, then there is always chromium or DWB. * Minecraft: I play minecraft, and I think it's fun. I write mods, and I run servers. But to include video games on an educational computer is repulsive and you should be ashamed. So what if kids like it? Kids like refined sugar too, lets just give that to students as a way for them to enjoy food. Some other points: The wide variety of programming languages is good, but the list you provided is noticeably lacking C (the most widely used language) or any systems language. Programming is about much more than stupid hello world programs and writing silly kiddie games, and should be treated as such. I also noticed a lack of purely functional languages, which bothers me more than I can effectively express in words. The lack of internet is good, but you completely missed the existence of man pages and virtually all compilers work offline as well. Having a great editor is fantastic, and I use sublime text (I even paid $70 for the license!), but as many people have said, you shouldn't. That $70 is much better spent on better hardware for the computer, and shipping with unlicensed software is wrong. Vim and Emacs are both more than capable of doing EVERYTHING sublime does and are much lighter weight, and free. Including the paragraph about the 'custom sidebar' is laughable. Aside from the fact that I dislike Unity and that the sidebar can be configured by students already, I don't think it's appropriate to coerce students into using the software YOU want them too. That flies so hard in the face of the unix philosophy. the function keys are easy to remap. I suggest looking into sxhkd as a replacement for the bloated tools you listed. It's free software and can be found on github. It is written by the same author as bspwm. developer mode screen: so reformat the laptop. I did it with arch and it works fine and has no 'scary screen' as you put it. *trackpad support is not the responsibility of the kernel, and a kernel update will not in fact remove support. This problem can easily be solved by distributing modified versions of the apt-get remote upstream lists. My final remark is that every time I hear someone refer to themselves as a 'coder' rather than a programmer, I die a bit inside. Please take this profession seriously and don't encourage what are commonly know as 'skript kiddies'.

dpcan 12y ago

Everything was going fine UNTIL.... one accidental press of the space bar and you wipe everything out! Yikes. :) Still looks great, but something tells me this would be in my kids' hands for about 3 days until everything accidentally got wiped out.

mojombo 12y ago
To be fair, pressing SPACE gets you a 2nd confirmation screen that must also be accepted, before your fate is sealed. And even then it just places you back into normal ChromeOS mode. The installer can easily be re-run to get you back to Codestarter-factory-settings, and is actually a pretty nice learning experience all on its own. But, yeah, those are all rationalizations for what is a non-ideal experience. I'm hoping to find a good solution to the problem.
- dpcan 12y ago
  But what about all your saved work? Reinstalling and losing everything could be a real tear jerker for kids. In fact, it's unlikely they would start over, possibly resulting in giving up on it completely given the emotional side effects. Maybe the solution should have a cloud backup option built in that uses Dropbox or something to clone all your data. Then at least you are just a couple-hour restore away from being back online.
zanny 12y ago
The mechanisms to completely wreck Windows are simpler than the same process on Linux. At least on Ubuntu, you need to enter a root password to delete /usr. On Windows until really recent versions deleting /Windows/sys32 was as easy a few explorer clicks. But even then, you can still just delete a few arbitrary DLLs and wreck the system all the same.
- dpcan 12y ago
  Create a guest login for the kids and they can hardly mess up anything. There's a big difference between hitting space bar and OK and losing everything, and finding a way to delete the windows system folders, considering they are usually hidden to begin with.

ck2 12y ago

Here is a refurbished C720 for $130 if that helps http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14ghz-dual-core-processor http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-acer-116-chromebook-with-14g...

Aissen 12y ago

The problems exposed show that being a distributor is harder than it seems; > The “developer mode” boot screen is scary and unhelpful. Then put your own bootloader ? You can do this by accessing the hardware: http://www.chromium.org/_/rsrc/1381990807648/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/acer-c720-chromebook/c720-chromebook-annotated-innards.png http://www.chromium.org/_/rsrc/1381990807648/chromium-os/dev... and removing the write-protect screw. Of course the chromeOS team is making sure it's not easy to bypass their security features, and it has the (desired?) side effect of preventing this kind of mass-scale re-purposing. > Kernel updates wipe out the custom kernel modules. Then put your own kernel. Being a distributor means taking responsibility about what's running on your hardware. Make your own repositories, recompile the kernel(you can even automate it), and while you're at it, add all those packages you're installing in the script(hello .deb package downloaded over http), and VERIFY THEIR SIGNATURES with apt. About the kernel, you could also make sure the upstream kernel supports the trackpad, and then make sure the (intermediary) distributors pick up the associated patches, so it's a burden off your plate in the mid/long term. You could also probably pay Canonical (or anyone else) to do this job.

DennisP 12y ago
Where is the write-protect screw in that picture?
- kps 12y ago
  7. Information for all available devices can be found under http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... Edit: re the GP post, the design is described here: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/developer-mode http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/d...

ff_ 12y ago

When I bought it this Acer C720 was like an experiment, at first I was skeptical. Now it's my main dev machine: its very little weight enables me to carry it wherever I go, the battery lasts 18h (18 HOURS, CRAZY!) if I read only PDFs, the 2gb of ram and the dual core are just perfect (but not tempting about running virtual machines on it), and with the SSD it performs better than more powerful machines with HDs. Oh, and I just love the 12" format. (Of course I have thrown away ChromeOS, now I run elementary OS)

32bitkid 12y ago
I, too, got a acer c720 as an experiment, and it also has earned it's way into being my primary machine. Not only for casual browsing, but development too. I use ChomeOS in developer mode and chromebrew (http://skycocker.github.io/chromebrew/ http://skycocker.github.io/chromebrew/) and then some installing binaries and building other dependencies. My current projects include node, ruby, java, and golang. Some days I miss having sublime, but Caret is a mostly competent stand-in. I would love to get one of the dell chromebook but they are next to impossible to find.
ameen 12y ago
How good is development on it (& elementary OS). I've only used Ubuntu/OSX for serious development. Does the 2GB RAM cause any issues?
- ff_ 12y ago
  I think it's just perfect: the zero-bloat of elementary OS allows me to get my multitasking work done flawlessly, keeping firefox+sublime+atom+a-lot-of-terminals open without a glitch. Also the dual core Celeron is fast in compiling things for elementary dev (of course just don't think to run Gentoo on it), while moderates the desire to play games. About the 2GB RAM: as devs we are used to systems with 8/16 GB today; if you can accept that even RAM is a finite thing so it isn't an issue. Anyway I try to preserve my SSD, so I keep my ~/Downloads folder in RAM, and at first I disabled the swap volume: the system just freezed too often. So I re-enabled the swap, but I reduced the swappiness and I plan to move it on an SD card.

rrss1122 12y ago

Why must it run Ubuntu? Especially if you're gonna turn around and make Chrome (not Chromium) the default browser anyway? Is it for the Minecraft (which, by the way, encourages a construction mindset, not an engineering mindset, since Minecraft takes numerous liberties with the laws of physics)? That seems like the only good reason, because you can already learn to code just fine on Chrome/Chromium.

aceperry 12y ago

I have the Acer C720 and installed Linux on it. It is an excellent development machine for what it is. Cheap but sturdy, light enough to carry places that I'm afraid to bring my Chromebook Pixel, cheap enough that I wouldn't be too bothered if I were to lose it instead of the Pixel, and fast enough to do most of what I want.

listic 12y ago

Are you sure you won't run into limitations of 2GB RAM? That's the thing that worries me most about these Chromebooks, if the SSD is indeed expandable. I routinely run over 2GB on 32-bit Ubuntu with regular office and internet browsing tasks; sometimes over 4GB.

cashoil 12y ago

In programming there are doers and thinkers. Thinkers also write code, but they have a perfect understanding - breadth and depth - of the application, the environment, the tools they use, the purpose... They have full autonomy and initiate things. They have passion and basically do not need any formal education in CS. Doers receive requirements and implement using the framework they have being told to use. Most people who have been told to do CS because it is financially rewarding or a good job end up in this category. It is any-office-job for them.