Google Chromebook and Ubuntu | Hacker News Reader

Google Chromebook and Ubuntu

xitijpatel.com

32 pointsHorizonXP20 comments

If you're 'pretty happy' without 'a good keyboard map, a properly working touchpad, graphics acceleration, power mgmt or hibernation', and you're actually running chromium but with no flash support... how 'unhappy' are you really just running ChromeOS in Dev mode?

That may sound more negative than I mean it, so don't take it that way.

EDIT: I too have an ARM chromebook, running it in Dev mode is a great experience if you basically just need a browser, vim and an SSH client.

Yeah, that's fair and it's something that I've considered.

To be honest, it's the flexibility of Ubuntu's software that I really like. I like having multiple workspaces, and I like having my VPN running so I can access my devices easily.

I realize it's doable on ChromeOS, but I'd rather keep that clean and untouched. It's easy to boot into if I need to. Who knows, after a while, I might change my mind.

Be interested to see how you get on with it after a few months. Also be interesting to see if someone gets FirefoxOS running on one of these, won't be me though ;)

Like graue said, Firefox OS is for phones only. However, installing Firefox was just about the first thing I did when I got my Cr-48. http://i.imgur.com/eCWwJ.png

Pretty sure Firefox OS is only running on phones so far, as the screenshots suggest: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefoxos/

what's the point getting a limited laptop , when for the same price you can get a better configuration and run any os you want easily ? i really dont understand how chromebooks are usefull.

It's the form factor. I had a difficult time finding a machine that was thin, light, and had good battery life. Most machines in this price range did not have any of those attributes. To get what I wanted, I had to be ready to spend somewhere near $1000. I'm not ready to do that until next year when Intel's Haswell comes out.

I'm tired of heavy machines that require loud fans. This fits the bill perfectly.

I've got the Acer Chromebook. Rather than dual booting, it was relatively easy to install a Debian chroot environment in developer mode to obtain the few extra dev utilities I really need (rdesktop mainly) that I couldn't get to work from the Chrome store.

Right now I have it set up so that display :0 is the normal Chrome OS x-server and :1 is my chrooted debian environment. This way I can switch between them with a simple Ctr-Alt-F3 or Ctr-Alt-F1.

The guide I found online to do so had subtly wrong instructions, however it was enough to point in the right direction. I've been planning to write up a corrected set of instructions. Hopefully I can do so soon and post here if there is interest.

I've been trying to get X displays working in a chroot environment on my Samsung ARM chromebook... I have Ubuntu working fine in a dual boot and in a chroot within ChromeOS, but can't set the display...any help would be appreciated.

Here's the chroot script I run:

    #!/bin/sh

    cp /proc/mounts /usr/local/wheezy/etc/mtab

    mount -o bind /sys /usr/local/wheezy/sys

    mount -o bind /proc /usr/local/wheezy/proc

    mount -o bind /dev/ /usr/local/wheezy/dev

    mount -o bind /dev/pts /usr/local/wheezy/dev/pts

    mount -o bind /tmp /usr/local/wheezy/tmp

    mount -o bind /home/chronos/user/     /usr/local/wheezy/root/chronos

    cp /home/chronos/.Xauthority /usr/local/wheezy/root/

    chroot /usr/local/wheezy/

And then in the chroot I have these lines in my .bashrc:

    export XAUTHORITY=/root/.Xauthority
    export DISPLAY=":1"

But I'm not sure they're actually necessary. I think you might just be able to do:

    DISPLAY=":1" startx &

from the command line to start X.

It seems to require being started from the actual virtual console on Ctl-Alt-F2 rather than from the crosh shell or local ssh.

I'll take a look at my setup when I get home and post the commands I'm running.

If anyone has any questions or needs help doing this on their own, let me know, I'd be happy to help.

Yeah, please. Is there a way to install onto the internal SSD? And if so, is there a noticeable speed difference?

In regards to upstream releasing an ARM version of Flash, I find that very unlikely, seeing as Adobe has ceased efforts to update Flash for Android 4.0+, likely indicating they are not planning on working on any other ARM based version.

Yeah, I thought about this after and realize that you're probably right.

However, the ChromeOS version of Chrome does include a version of Flash that seems to work. Moreover, BlackBerry 10's browser comes with its own version of Flash too. So it's out there, but likely not available for distribution outside of closed systems.

Hmm, I think Google is managing a derivative of Adobe Flash in some form or another as the version in the latest unstable version of Chrome is around 11.5 which is not what the latest Adobe version is.

Maybe there's a way to get the Flash plugin out of the ChromeOS system image? Not sure how what it'd be linked against, so that could pose a problem.

Definitely a thought that others and myself have had.

I have an older Chromebook (Samsung Series 5, Alex codename) and I now have it running Ubuntu. The only thing that I dislike is that the ChrUbuntu script I used is using the ChromeOS kernel and runnig Ubuntu on top of it, so I am missing support for a whole range of devices because they are not included in the default kernel for ChromeOS... that is going to take me digging some to figure it out and compile my own kernel.

Not that much to figure out. The kernel sources are on git.chromium.org and they have a script (prepare-config, I think it's called) that gathers all the defaults that they set. Then just run make menuconfig and it's just like building your own kernel. Just be careful that you don't turn off anything that is needed for the Chromebook.

Yep Ubuntu is the way to go. I was a Windows only kinda guy before I received my CR-48 from the pilot program. I tried Ubuntu for a bit, went to Windows 7 for a while, then Windows 8. Finally a few weeks back I saw some value in Linux for dev environments and went back to Ubuntu. I haven't looked back since.

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