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Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

Can you completely strip Chrome OS from these Chromebooks? Including BIOS-specific stuff like automatic rewriting of modified base system? So that you could boot straight into Linux without worrying your OS will be gone if you forget to press some key upon boot?

BTW, flash-based storage (likely eMMC) for >$1k is just eek.

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The last premium Chromebook, the Pixel, yes you could install Linux and just boot into it.

Problem was, Linux... Debian was not ready for this device, especially the high res screen, which made the UI in Linux super duper tiny. Debian saw the screen as a giant regular resolution screen...

Lots of edge cases like this, especially with touch screens.

fedora and ubuntu have worked really well for me on high dpi screens. Unity and GNOME didn't require any tweaking.

Thanks! I was asking because I would like to have a dedicated "retro" machine for running all 8-bit/16-bit and console emulators and a Pentium 4405Y would be capable of running all of them smoothly (Baytrail/Braswell are too slow); 32GB eMMC would be sufficient as well.

Frankly, if yer looking for a portable way to play emulated games and old computer stuff, the nVidia Shield Portable is amazing. It's like someone at nVidia saw all these GP32's and weird handheld emulation devices and said," geez, we could make that actually work."

Alternately, an Intel NUC or a compute stick works, too. As do Raspberry Pi. I would caution against making this kinda device into an emulator box. You want generic hardware.

For Dolphin you really need something based on Core M or better to run smoothly (CPU intense). I have a Shield TV and never considered it for it; 8-bit/16-bit would run there smoothly I am sure though. If Pipo KB1/KB2 had Core M, they would have been ideal both performance and retro form factor-wise ;-)

This won't be suitable for bitL if they want Core M, but a super-interesting device in the same performance and size bracket as the Shield (but a much stronger focus on general purpose mobile computing) is the Pyra, which just started taking preorders a few days ago and will likely ship in a few months.

edit: reread your question, probably not. Most chromebooks can't have the ROM totally overwritten.

most Chromebooks can run Linux by writing by writing over a sector of the ROM. Most (and probably this laptop) unfortunately can only write to the RW_LEGACY or BOOT_STUB which introduce significant problems. I'd definitely just run crouton for these.

https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download...

All chromebooks allow to completely overwrite the firmware.

It requires opening the machine though (and then turning a screw), both as a crude security measure (it's not a drive-by attack if it takes 10 minutes of physical access) and a stability guarantee (without the modification, the system basically can't be stuck, no matter how broken an update might be).

Disclosure: I work on Chrome OS firmware.

I suppose I've been reading third party documentation.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chrome_OS_devices/Chrom...

Along with the link above indicates otherwise. Are these websites both wrong?

I did completely overwrite the firmware for my Acer c720 (by removing that write protect screw) but I assumed that was an exception.

The write protect screw (or a similar mechanism) exists and works the same way on every Chromebook.

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