SlashGear reports
Crouton was always the best method for getting a Linux distro on your Chromebook, but required you to swap back and forth between the two [OSes], which is fussy if you just want to do something on a distro like Ubuntu quickly. Now, Crouton is available via an extension, which lets you run two [OSes] side-by-side.
[...]Handy for more demanding multitasking, the side-by-side [OSes] still ask that you have some heftier hardware, so be careful about which Chromebook you try this with. If you've got an older model, this one might slow you down to an unusable state. Google isn't recommending any hardware configuration for the new extension to run with, but it's easy to see where problems may occur.
Again, this is a step for the bold, so unless you're comfortable with running scripts and side-loading a Linux distro, think of this as the future for Chrome OS multitasking.
[...]Via: Google+
(Score: 2, Funny) by gallondr00nk on Sunday January 04 2015, @04:04PM
Just kidding.
I'd always assumed with Chromebooks that people simply format them to replace ChromeOS with a *nix distro. Is it actually more difficult than that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @04:28PM
Not really. I have a chromebox (aka chromebook without keyboard or monitor) and I completely wiped it and installed OpenELEC (an "embedded" linux distro for xbmc) it took a few months from first commercial release before people had automated the process, but now it is about a 5 minute effort.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @04:08PM
And just run linux on the chromebook. Install chromium and tada something that isn't just a spyware disguised as a browser as an OS.
I thought the whole point of using a chromebook is that you don't do any serious stuff. The target customerbase is people who know nothing about computers and/or just need a thing to browse the web with.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Sunday January 04 2015, @06:24PM
I thought the whole point of using a chromebook is that you don't do any serious stuff. The target customerbase is people who know nothing about computers and/or just need a thing to browse the web with.
Remember netbooks? They were designed for exactly the same customers, using exactly the same approach (a dumbed-down Linux distro exposing only basic functionality). And a million geeks (especially college students) bought them, installed normal distros, traded tips on getting more utility out of low-end hardware, and were happy. (For a while, I thought all this experience with bitty boxes might prepare a new wave of sane developers to combat the bloating trend of the modern Linux desktop, but it seems our friend Lennart took the wrong lesson, hence systemd.) Then Microsoft saw all these computers shipping without Windows, or in some cases with XP, and tried to make manufacturers preload them with Vista.
Netbooks sold well outside their target audience because they were compact (a substantial subset of the geek crowd had always lusted after Japanese thin-and-light machines), easy to tinker with in both software and hardware, and most of all because they were cheap (remember, college students).
Chromebooks are more-or-less compact (personally, I prefer 10" or less, but even 13" is a big improvement over the 15-17" models most proper laptop makers seem to be pushing.), more-or-less easy to hack (in software, dunno about hardware), and cheap! Of course they're selling like hotcakes to the generation of geeks presently in college.
As for why not blow ChromeOS away -- I don't know the details, but I suspect the situation on ARM chromebooks is more or less like Android devices -- there's a lot of hardware-support details (especially graphics drivers) that make it hard to replace Android, but easy to run a chrooted Debian/Ubuntu/etc. install under Android.
(Score: 2) by black6host on Sunday January 04 2015, @08:05PM
I still have an eee pc that I use to this day. In a small laptop case (not a backpack) I could carry it, some cables and my most often used tools when going to a client.
Well, that was back then. Now my plans are to use it to play backing tracks, that I've already recorded, through my amp or pa while I play live guitar. It's just so damn small and convenient. I've got Win 7 on it and it runs very nicely. Certainly enough horsepower to send an audio feed out the headphone jack.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday January 05 2015, @03:52PM
I feel the same about my EEE, its the 1215B (the one with the AMD E350 APU) and its just soooo damned handy. It gets great battery life, fits under the seat when I'm going out on housecalls, and even has HDMI out if I want to use it as a portable media tank. I even used it with my previous band to playback tracks off the digital recorder into a home stereo to give us a feel of what the song would sound like on home systems.
BTW just FYI I have Windows 10 running on my EEE and it runs great, boosted the speed by about 30% and cut down boottime as well. I even have full hardware acceleration despite the drivers running in compatibility mode. You might want to give it a spin if you'd like a little extra speed from your EEE.
As for the Chromebook? Its still more restricted than any other laptop that I know of so I'll pass. Say what you will but I can buy any Worst Buy Special running Windows and be booting into anything from BSD to WinXP in the time it takes to install the OS, with a Chromebook you can only run a tiny subset of Linux distros. Its ironic as hell that so many supposed FOSS lovers would push a DRMed to hell platform that RMS himself has railed against but I guess there are some that don't care what they give up as long as it'll run something GNU, no matter how crippled it may be.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Informative) by quixote on Sunday January 04 2015, @05:13PM
I have an Acer c710 and I wanted to install a real OS instead of the spyware. It was a major song-and-dance. johnlewis.ie [johnlewis.ie] was critical to the process. Still, once I got it up and running with Mint17, I liked it enough that I thought I'd follow up with a newer and greater chromebook. There are a couple out now with good screens. Well, turns out they all have pathetic amounts of memory soldered in, so you can't upgrade it. Gotta force people onto the cloud where they can be monetized, I guess. And those horrible Bay Trail chips that run like underfed ducks.
Turns out the Acer 720 (3 years old?) was the sweet spot! What is wrong with the computer industry these days?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday January 04 2015, @06:12PM
Bean counters and their MBA counterparts?
(Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Sunday January 04 2015, @06:34PM
I imagine it's the convergence of hardware and services that are to blame. Amazon, Apple and Google are on it already, Windows may well follow suit if they change to a subscription model.
It could well be that computing in twenty years time is done by some sort of subscription model, whereby you lease a non serviceable black box that's replaced every two or three years with the newest model with all your stuff stored at massive data centres. And naturally, of course, every bit is analysed and mined for the benefit of a collosal monetisation and advertising industry.
It's a possible future. Fortunately, there's FOSS.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @06:57PM
I'll go one step further and say it's the probably future, certainly what we're headed dead at currently. The irony is that in the future there might not be hardware to run all our free software on. The only solution is to build free hardware. Impossible you say? Just remember that's what people said about rms developing a free operating system in 1983 and yet a mere 9 years later GNU/Linux was completed.
(Score: 1) by quixote on Sunday January 04 2015, @08:52PM
Fortunately, there's FOSS.
God, I sure hope so. All it takes is a few key people selling out / deciding a UI that works only for them is the way to go / or whatever and it's all over but the shouting.
Hardware + services = vertical monopoly and wouldn't even be allowed if we had a government instead of a kleptocracy. (Grr. Don't get me started. I'll go back in my basket now.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05 2015, @03:28AM
I'm typing this on a $299 toshiba chromebook 2. It has 4 GB RAM and a 1080p IPS screen.
Yes, the CPU is sluggish, but it runs Crouton ubuntu XFCE fine and I can run MS Office via WINE or VNC/rdesktop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05 2015, @02:55PM
Nothing , just ignorant or cheap ass motherfuckers with more time than sense trying to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.