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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, @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).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(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.