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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Chromebooks are one of the most secure devices you can give a non-technical end user, and at a price point few can argue with, but that security comes with a privacy trade off: you have to trust Google, which is part of the NSA's Prism programme, with your data in the cloud.
Even those who put their faith in the company's rusty "don't be evil" mantra may find Chromebook functionality limiting—if you want more than Google services, Netflix, some other Web apps, and maybe the Android app store, then you're out of luck.
Geeky users willing to engage in some entry-level hackery, however, can install Linux on their Chromebook and unleash the Power of Torvalds™.
[...] Trying out Crouton is easy, and worth an evening's tinkering. Enter developer mode on your Chromebook, which for most users means holding down the Esc and Refresh keys while tapping the power button. Doing so will erase all local data on your Chromebook (in the unlikely event that you have any locally stored data on a cloud-focused device, granted). Hit Ctrl-D, Enter, and wait five minutes or so for the Chromebook to wipe.
Once in developer mode, your Chromebook will offer a warning message every time you boot-up that the device is now vulnerable. David Schneider, the Crouton maintainer, who works for Google but was unable to get permission to speak to Ars for this article, outlines the security trade offs on the Crouton wiki:
"Dev mode out of the box does several things that compromise security, including disabling verified boot, enabling VT2 [terminal], and activating passwordless root shell access. This means even without Crouton, if you're in dev mode, someone can switch to VT2, log in as root and add a keylogger that runs at startup, then switch back without you knowing. If you're logged in, they can also access the unencrypted contents of your Chrome profile and copy it elsewhere. If an exploit to Chrome is found, verified boot will no longer protect you from persistent compromises. Essentially, dev mode by default is less physically secure than a standard laptop running Linux."
You've been warned. Once in dev mode, enter your Wi-Fi password and accept the EULA, then select "Browse as Guest." Head on over to Schneider's GitHub repo and download Crouton, and follow the instructions.
There are a few more seemingly straightforward steps detailed in the article. Thinking of those in the community who might like to give it a try, who here has already converted a Chromebook to run Linux? Was it worth it? What hardware did you have? What 'gotchas' did you run into?
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 26 2017, @12:50PM (9 children)
The Chromebook traits of high battery life, small SSD, low power CPU with no fan needed, etc. are starting to get copied onto some Windows laptops/netbooks.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @01:21PM (8 children)
Aka a raspberry pi. But you need a display and keyboard. Then again anything written in the last decade or two is probably a web application anyway. OpenHab pi install runs my smarthome-ish scripted actions. Octo-print distribution runs my 3-d printer. And the chromebook is basically a web browser appliance, making it perfect to talk to those boxes.
Chromebook also SSH and VNCs real well. In the old days you'd pay like $100 for a terminal server so you can telnet to a RS-232 port to do "stuff". For $5 you can get a pi zero (well, in theory) and SSH into it and do "whatever" on the USB ports. So for example I have a network accessible Bus Pirate, which sounds real impressive name but its just a I2C protocol analyzer/debugger. Anyway its sold for USB connection so I'm outta luck with a chromebook, right, but I just plug it into a rasp-pi thats laying around, then SSH into the rasp pi and run CLI minicom terminal to connect to /dev/ttyUSB0. There are also server side web browser "terminals" that work with varying levels of success, such that you can run "ajaxterm" or similar and connect to that console via a web browser.
Cheap little networked dev boards like the rasp pi and to a lesser extent ESP8266 things are quite an enabling technology for my chromebook.
I will say there are two problems with the chromebook. I'm out on road now but you have to be careful not to buy a crap display with specs from the 90s, like only 720 pixels tall. I had 800x600 resolution in the early 90s on my desktop and upgraded past 720 before the mid 90s. Not interested in going back just to save $50. So spend the dough for the highest res best screen you can get. Also "most" chomebook keyboards suck. I'm spoiled by having a mechanical original model-M on the desktop but chromebook keyboards are so crappy you have to use "esc-" in emacs instead of "alt-" as your meta key for example.
I'd pay a lot of money for a laptop with a keyboard that doesn't suck (aka mechanical full set of keys) and a high res screen. I think I'll have to make one, bodging up some woodworking. All I need for a CPU is a rasp-pi, like I mentioned all I need is a browser and network connectivity. I don't even need a great battery as I rarely use my laptop far from a AC outlet right now. This sounds like one of those "Ben Heck" videos in the making although I don't laser and CNC router like that guy.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday June 26 2017, @02:18PM (4 children)
Even if the application is intended to run offline? If you're riding public transit, and you're not paying hundreds of dollars per year to a cellular ISP for a second Internet connection in addition to the wired connection you use at home, you're offline.
Only very, very recently have the technologies come together to turn a native application into an offline web application. But each of those has practical problems as of the second quarter of 2017:
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @02:43PM (1 child)
I live in the USA so we have no bus, so that problem is solved. Instead of hours on bus and train for a commute I spend 20 minutes in car, listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I would imagine public transport is only a problem for a very small segment of the total population. Even if I had a mythical self driving car (which is more expensive than simply hiring a servant to drive my car) I would probably rather chill for 20 minutes than try to stress fully squeeze in a third of a billable hour. Crime rates are high and only poor people use the bus in the USA so if I whipped out a laptop on a bus it would probably just get stolen anyway, so that has to be budgeted for.
Google Fi allows tethering, no contract, I do the shared family plan for less on average, but a single dude its $30/month. If I spent "hours" on a bus each week at my usual billable rate then buying connectivity would be a rounding error. I don't have the quota to download multiple linux ISOs per day but then again a gig of SSH session is heck of a lot of typing and reading, so I'm good there. I've never actually used the tether, where I live the "free and open" wifi is still very popular.
You do have a serious point for students in a school bus, assuming they would actually work and not goof off or watch inappropriate youtube videos or whatever.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday June 27 2017, @02:33PM
Or half-donkeyed bus [fwcitilink.com] in my case. Or a school bus, as you acknowledged, especially with the push to market one Chromebook per child.
How much do loan repayment or lease, maintenance, fuel, and insurance cost you per month?
My experience differs.
That is, $360/year.
Is this true of an RDP, VNC, or X11 session as well? Or ought bus riders' use of the Internet to be limited to those use cases where text is sufficient?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @04:38PM (1 child)
If I wanted to get all picky, i could note that you spoke of paying hundreds "for a second Internet connection", and disregard the per-line costs (equally applicable to voice/SMS service), which are not "for" the internet, just a prerequisite -- but I won't. Prices in this post are the full price for a line and internet usage -- obviously you'll pay extra if you also use voice/SMS.
Ting: $6/month per line, $3/month for <100MB usage = $108 per year. I wouldn't call that "hundreds", though I suppose you could: 1.08 hundreds of dollars!
In fact you could use up to 1GB every month for just under $200, which is where I would start throwing the term hundreds around. Or, if your usage varies significantly, you could have <500MB or <100MB some months, and spend the savings going over 1GB others.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday June 27 2017, @02:55PM
Prepaid voice and SMS service on T-Mobile USA starts at $3 per month for 30 minutes per month. (I save long conversations for the landline at home.) The difference in price between what I currently pay and a T-Mobile prepaid plan including data does amount to "hundreds of dollars per year".
Ting's compatibility guide [ting.com] claims that any T-Mobile phone should work once it's unlocked. But based on unlock eligibility requirements [t-mobile.com], I have to stay on T-Mobile for a few more months before I can unlock my phone for use on Ting. Or is it more common to buy a new phone every time one switches carriers?
How much data does X11, VNC, or RDP use per hour for, say, a typical GUI app development work load? Others have suggested using such remote access technologies as a substitute to work around unavailability of particular applications for a walled garden device, such as unavailability of Visual Studio on Windows 10 S or unavailability of Xcode on iPad Pro.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 26 2017, @02:29PM (2 children)
I got a ~$92 Chromebook. 11.6 inch screen, which was just fine in terms of size (soyquitter Gravis would disagree).
My problems with it are the APU and 2 GB RAM. The system will hang or crash likely because of the dual-core Celeron N2830. The default video playback software sucks and VLC performance at 720p was inconsistent or bad IIRC. That's down to the CPU performance and whatever hardware video decoding is on board (the gen I got would not handle 720p H.265 well). Still, it's better than the Atoms of yore. Or those atrocious AMD E-3XX chips.
ChromeOS handles 2 GB of RAM pretty well but I can't just open more than 10 tabs without running into comstant reloading and probable crashing/freezing. Hypothetically, if 1 GB of RAM was used by the OS, doubling total RAM to 4 GB is like tripling the available RAM. I don't know the actual numbers, but I do know I crave RAM, even though it's just typical web browsing with adblocking and scriptblocking reducing the burden. I'd take a Chromebook with 8 GB and I wouldn't say no to more cuz why not.
Even if you're using Linux instead of ChromeOS, you'll probably run into the above problems unless you shun all video and games, and run Lynx. Good luck with the Raspi's Allwinner, though i guess the quad-core is much better than the original.
1366x768 resolution is depressingly common but 1920x1080 is picking up (of course, some will complain about the aspect ratio).
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @02:59PM (1 child)
Yeah the level of hassle on that is much like tablets or phones where the sub $100 ebay special is likely a lot more hassle than a more expensive one.
I was motivated to check amazon and I apparently blew $300 some time ago on "Acer Chromebook 14, Aluminum, 14-inch Full HD, Intel Celeron N3160, 1920x1080, 4GB LPDDR3, 32GB, Chrome, Gold, CB3-431-C0AK" so far so good have not had any of the problems you report. I certainly have no video playback problems.
the only "problem" I have other than all chromebook keyboards are weird, is the charger is a little coaxial plug not a "this decade" USB port.
I'm well aware its possible to buy a "bottom in class" windows laptop for less money but the problems will exceed "I don't like the charger cable and the keyboard is weird". For example there's a HP windows 10 laptop on my other tab for $248 at amazon, new, however... 768 resolution, small and slow spinning rust hard drive instead of SSD, I didn't know win10 could boot in only 4 gigs ram, 5 hour marketing battery life means about 2 and a half or less in reality (lets call it two). And it runs win10 which is a huge negative. And its a HP which is another huge negative. And despite its minimal performance it still somehow weighs 5 pounds just in case you're out boating and need a backup anchor. The comments are hilarious "The laptop hardware is excellent. However, it is loaded with bloatwares and the CPU usage is at 100% all the time.". Yeah I'd rather not experience bottom of the barrel windows laptops, even if it would be cheaper than my chromebook, naw thanks, someone else can "enjoy" that particular HP laptop for me, thanks.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:25AM
HP used to make brilliant hardware.
Then they got into the PC market, split up and gave the high quality ethic to Agilent.
.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.