All of these "install ... on Chromebook" articles fail to mention that on recent Chromebooks without a physical developer mode switch (Samsung's ARM-based one, Pixel) you have to press a specific hidden keyboard combination and endure the big scary "developer mode" warning on each boot. In my view that makes it practically useless for day-to-day use as a general purpose laptop.
You can flash the first stage bootloader to remove that warning, but that is not documented well (if you can call several contradictory forum threads documentation), involves taking the laptop apart and gives you exactly one try: it either works or bricks the device permanently.
In addition to that, at least Samsung's Chromebooks are not very well designed and can be seriously damaged from userspace when running a general-purpose distribution (Google for burning speakers on ARM Chromebook for instance)
Agree with all your points. On the other hand, these are cheap, widely available A15 devices with a reasonable amount of RAM, and that has a certain appeal for people who need ARM-based developer machines (we used them for porting Fedora, KVM, libvirt, libguestfs and the virt tools to ARM).
Also I used one for 2+ weeks exclusively (running Fedora 18) and it wasn't that bad:
On regular laptops, you open the lid and press the "On" button.
On my Chromebook, it boots as soon as you open the lid, and so I press Ctrl-D instead of the "On" button. I thought it'd be a pain, but it doesn't bother me at all, and you say that makes it "practically useless"?
The developer mode warning only occurs on boot, as you say. Having owned by the ARM Chromebook and the Pixel since both were released, I've probably seen that warning less than 8 times since install. The Chromebooks very rarely need to be turned off, and the one time that does happen often, on update restarts, actually bypasses that warning.
I am typing this on the Pixel that's been my main machine since I/O in May. Yeah, that screen is minorly annoying, but it goes away with one keystroke - not a dealbreaker.
>Btw, on Pixel you don’t have this physical switch. You can just use a keyboard combination: Press and hold the Esc and Refresh keys while you hit the Power button
The next challenge is getting KVM working. The Chromebook has an A15 chip which has hardware assisted virtualization. Unfortunately the firmware disables HYP mode, but the Xen guys managed to workaround this in their bootloader so it should be possible for KVM too.
Another note about the Chromebook is it is not possible to boot it from an external hard drive. You have to boot it from USB flash although after boot you can of course use a real hard drive as the root filesystem.
No, the firmware doesn't disable Hyp mode; it just starts the kernel in Secure-SVC, rather than in Hyp mode. It's pretty trivial to get from Secure-SVC to Hyp in the bootloader before starting the kernel -- there are u-boot patches floating about which do it.
As far as I can tell the main issue with the Chromebook is that there's no one organization who's taking responsibility for making sure fixes and changes like this get upstream, so every distro/person ends up reinventing or locally maintaining patches.
Tried Crouton on my Acer C7 Chromebook a few months back, and it was buggy as hell. Switched to the Chrubuntu script, and it's been a dream. I'm surprised it's not mentioned at all.
I keep being surprised that there is no real ARM netbook (samsung's chromebook and asus transformer come closest).
I think the reason is because ARM is significantly less performant than x86. You don't notice it on a phone/tablet, because the stack is optimised (it has to be!) the special-purpose OS, lots of stuff in silicon (esp video), games and (mobile) webpages are written for the platform. But for general computation - e.g. compiling - it's much slower.
ARM has optimised power consumption for decades; x86 has optimised performance for decades, so I shouldn't be surprised.
PS: doesn't ubuntu have an ARM laptop in the works? (along the lines of their EDGE phone)?
Have had Ubuntu on my ARM chromebook since late last year. Only issue so far is that the version of Slim dm that is available for it from the 12.04 repos is b0rked and doesn't speak to consolekit properly, resulting in all sorts of hard to diagnose fun with reboot and other permissions.
I just did this last night on my Samsung Chromebook. One problem I immediately ran into was the difficulty of getting programs to run in Ubuntu because of my ARM processor. Any suggestions?
Things seem better now. I remember bricking the original beta google chromebook that google gave out for testing because of following murky instructions.
Me, I have a long running ARM fetish ever since debian-ising my NSLU2 back in the day. Also for some sick reason I like to repurpose stuff.
All that said - it turns out ChromeOS with developer access enabled (so I can get a proper shell and a normal ssh client) covers about 80% of my needs in a client machine.
[+] [-] avian|12 years ago|reply
You can flash the first stage bootloader to remove that warning, but that is not documented well (if you can call several contradictory forum threads documentation), involves taking the laptop apart and gives you exactly one try: it either works or bricks the device permanently.
In addition to that, at least Samsung's Chromebooks are not very well designed and can be seriously damaged from userspace when running a general-purpose distribution (Google for burning speakers on ARM Chromebook for instance)
[+] [-] rwmj|12 years ago|reply
Also I used one for 2+ weeks exclusively (running Fedora 18) and it wasn't that bad:
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/some-thoughts-after-2-5...
[+] [-] broodbucket|12 years ago|reply
On my Chromebook, it boots as soon as you open the lid, and so I press Ctrl-D instead of the "On" button. I thought it'd be a pain, but it doesn't bother me at all, and you say that makes it "practically useless"?
[+] [-] jdn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsimpson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdiggerm|12 years ago|reply
Source: The article you're commenting on
[+] [-] rwmj|12 years ago|reply
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F19/Remixes... http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung-chro...
The next challenge is getting KVM working. The Chromebook has an A15 chip which has hardware assisted virtualization. Unfortunately the firmware disables HYP mode, but the Xen guys managed to workaround this in their bootloader so it should be possible for KVM too.
Another note about the Chromebook is it is not possible to boot it from an external hard drive. You have to boot it from USB flash although after boot you can of course use a real hard drive as the root filesystem.
[+] [-] pm215|12 years ago|reply
http://www.virtualopensystems.com/media/chromebook/chromeboo... is probably a good place to start if you want to tinker.
As far as I can tell the main issue with the Chromebook is that there's no one organization who's taking responsibility for making sure fixes and changes like this get upstream, so every distro/person ends up reinventing or locally maintaining patches.
[+] [-] jlgreco|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkuntz2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenido|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petroica|12 years ago|reply
http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-scri...
[+] [-] 1945|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] broodbucket|12 years ago|reply
http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-s...
[+] [-] _mc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethammons|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6ren|12 years ago|reply
I think the reason is because ARM is significantly less performant than x86. You don't notice it on a phone/tablet, because the stack is optimised (it has to be!) the special-purpose OS, lots of stuff in silicon (esp video), games and (mobile) webpages are written for the platform. But for general computation - e.g. compiling - it's much slower.
ARM has optimised power consumption for decades; x86 has optimised performance for decades, so I shouldn't be surprised.
PS: doesn't ubuntu have an ARM laptop in the works? (along the lines of their EDGE phone)?
[+] [-] Nursie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbuccini|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|12 years ago|reply
If you're trying x86/wine then forget it. But the usual suspects are available from the ubuntu repos just fine.
[+] [-] kyberias|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srik|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caiob|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|12 years ago|reply
All that said - it turns out ChromeOS with developer access enabled (so I can get a proper shell and a normal ssh client) covers about 80% of my needs in a client machine.
[+] [-] msoad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_bx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] broodbucket|12 years ago|reply