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: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @12:18PM (1 child)
Its not for legacy operators. The only thing I use windows for at my current employer is accessing web based applications. Last time I can recall a new legacy desktop application being used was around 2005 for a spectrum analyzer remote control. Maybe there's been something new in the desktop world since '05 but I don't think so. The winds of change were pretty clear by mid to late 90s.
My chromebook has a SSH client that has a UI that looks so weird it makes Putty almost look normal, but it works perfectly for console work. There's a VNC client that works awesome and I connect to a virtual machine of relatively immense specifications.
Even at home, I'm kinda moving away from my 15 or so year old mythtv system toward something more "emby media server" web based. I don't need an "emby client" it works fine from the web interface.
So it weighs nothing, costs next to nothing, does everything I could possibly want, battery runs 10 hours (depending on screen brightness) remind me again why I "need" to spend 10x as much on an apple laptop thats equally or less secure?
I played with the Crouton but its kind of a PITA and doesn't really have a point in that if I don't need extreme computing resources I can carry a rasp-pi in a (big) pocket. If I do need extreme computing resources without network access there are lunchbox sized nano- pico- whatevero- sized motherboards and cases. I don't live an area or lifestyle where I can't get network access where I need it, so most of the time its VPN back to home base and connect via SSH and/or VPN to truly immense resources.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 26 2017, @05:48PM
>remind me again why I "need" to spend 10x as much on an apple laptop
I just went to Starbucks to kill 20 minutes between appointments (my second time in a Starbucks in the last 6 years or so...) if you haven't mated yet, there's a common class of seeker out there who will pay more attention to you if you're showing the best bling in the room. The glowing apple in the lid was engineered for just such concerns. The Starbucks I was in only had about 3 laptops in evidence, most people were on cellphones (harder to differentiate from a distance), but at least one of the laptop lids was glowing fruitily, and the latte next to it stayed 1/3 drunk for the entire 20 minutes I was there, waiting for.... something.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Monday June 26 2017, @12:30PM (16 children)
I would.
I'd buy one just to do this.
If it wasn't for the stupid "we're going to warn you on every boot" and the rest of the security problems mentioned with doing so.
A Chromebook would make a great "no-OS" laptop, but they don't care about that market at all.
Sorry, but if I'm going to have to go out of my way to run a void-warranty, no-support operating system, with all kinds of annoyances associated with doing so, then I won't bother.
I might as well just buy a netbook with Windows and then do what I like with it.
(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.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(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).
[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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @02:13PM (5 children)
You can fairly easily flash libreboot on some rk3288-based chromebooks (Asus C201 is supported in the last release, more are coming). It requires no special tools but does require opening the case to enable write access to the flash. Might be some folks selling these with libreboot preinstalled if that suits your fancy.
Libreboot uses essentially the same boot software but the warnings are substantially less intrusive and the automatic boot delay is changed from 30 seconds to 3. And it's all free software so you can make it to do something else if you prefer.
These are probably the most free-software-friendly laptops available today, and they're still being manufactured so you can actually buy new ones.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday June 26 2017, @02:22PM (1 child)
In the past, I have had several devices develop problems with their power jacks such that I have to hold the cord in a very specific position to get it to charge. I got one laptop's power jack serviced under warranty. But as I understand it, installing libreboot voids the warranty on the whole thing. If I need to get a Chromebook's power jack serviced after having installed libreboot, how do I go about doing so?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @03:10PM
If the battery is dead, they'll plug in a charger, notice the jack doesn't work, and give you a new one (or possibly fix it) not noticing the software installed.
Note that enabling dev mode does not void the guarantees, I mean, devs do use it...
If the battery isn't dead yet, when you disable dev mode, in my experience the SSD gets powerwashed which is apparently chrome-user-speak for wiped with zeros and reinstalled with stock chrome OS from scratch. I would estimate it took 15 minutes when I did it? At that point "they" can't tell what you were doing before you powerwashed it.
A security wise user would be foolish not to powerwash before sending a machine in for service, what possible troubleshooting advantage could you provide by giving "them" access to your entire online life? So I suspect they're pretty used to powerwashed chromebooks crossing their desk. And if the trouble ticket is "no charge light when plugged in" I don't think they're gonna poke around the SSD anyway.
The question I have is if you have an install you like, how do you back it up or whatever before disabling dev mode which wipes it? I'm sure the community has some method. Stick a large flash drive in the USB and bit for bit copy the entire SSD maybe. I own a 32G thumb drive somewhere and probably few chromebooks have more than 32 gig SSD. That would be my guess. Or if you have "drive.google.com" I think my chromebook came with a promo for a zillion free gigs of storage.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @03:15PM (1 child)
From memory this was a BIOS-like switch on my ACER, I certainly didn't open it up when I was messing around with it before I returned it to default.
Hold down a bunch of keys while turning on power. Not a traditional BIOS in the sense of stereotypical desktop but conceptually similar.
Probably worth checking online before buying if you anticipate enabling dev mode (or not). Holding down escape and refresh or WTF while hitting the power is a lot more convenient than getting out the micro screwdriver set.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @04:55PM
I suppose other models could be different but all rk3288 chromebooks have hardware write protection on the flash chips that cannot be bypassed without physically opening the case. On the C201 this takes the form of a screw which must be removed to enable writing to the flash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @04:44PM
Oh, sweet! I've got a c100 running crouton, and I'm looking forward to getting rid of the scare warnings.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @01:21PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by optotronic on Tuesday June 27 2017, @02:43AM
I've been using GalliumOS for a year or so on my Acer C720 and find it much better than Chrubuntu or ChromeOS.
The combination is good for web browsing. Composition (emails, programs, etc) is not as good because of missing keys and inadvertent touchpad contact. I don't mind the quality of the keys for my limited use, but not having some keys (page up/down, home/end, etc) is sometimes frustrating.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @01:22PM (2 children)
I've tried doing this with a Chromebook using an AMD CPU. Got 3-4 FPS in Minecraft. Another Chromebook (same pricerange) which had an Intel CPU/GPU got acceptable FPS in Minecraft.
This was about a year ago, so YMMV...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 26 2017, @01:45PM (1 child)
You probably mean ARM not AMD
I have not bothered with android apps on my chromebook but I've read about it. You get to chose your poison in that ARM chromebooks supposedly run Android apps better/faster/less bugs in general.
I've seen some really stupid arguments about that, however, for example the android google sheets app is slow and sucky on intel but I don't understand why you'd run the inferior android app to access google sheets from a machine with a fast and speedy web browser where sheets works fine, at least for me. Likewise why even try the android google maps app when you can just go to maps.google.com in the chromebook browser?
I wonder in your specific example if Android minecraft app would run well on your ARM chromebook. I prefer heavily modded FTB packs so I have no option but my lovely desktop or those $3K+ gamer laptops.
Probably the best way to run android apps if you're a chromebook owner is to put one of those $50 "ebay special" tablets in your laptop bag. But just saying it is an option and supposedly works better under ARM than under intel.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 26 2017, @02:32PM
Right, I have never seen an AMD chromebook. I'm eager to see AMD mobile Ryzen of all flavors, though I might skip it and spring for 7nm which may be appearing sooner than you think (AMD will skip 10nm).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @01:59PM (3 children)
The current chromebooks are just below my radar in specs buts the next generation will cross my lines in the sand with the rockchip RK3399.
The rockchip-linux people have been making progress with the RK3288 based devices and distros are appearing for it. If the pattern continues for the RK3399 I might be able to replace my 11 year old laptop for something with a better screen and be able to drive two additional 4k screens. It's been a log wait. Added advantage of getting intel off my hardware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @02:33PM (2 children)
According to Rockchip [wikidot.com]:
As far as I know, Mali GPUs are highly proprietary; this is one of the reasons that ARM is actually a terrible platform for those who want to use free and open-source software.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @04:41PM
Yup but this 11 year old laptop has an nvidia gpu, at least with the chromebooks we get libreboot as an option and no intel backdoors (I've not found the arm backdoors yet.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:46AM
This is true, there is no free driver for the Mali T, so these laptops are not perfect. But these laptops still work without the Mali, you will not get 3D acceleration but many other functions work perfectly fine.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Monday June 26 2017, @04:24PM
Acer C720P-2666 Touchscreen Chromebook | Intel Celeron
The advatage of Crouton it is a chroot so not need to reboot but on my hardware it had issues of volume buttons not working and after some times when running multiple stuff it will lock.
So shifted to chrubuntu ..it is dual boot but it takes may be 10's of second to reboot from chromeOS side to Ubuntu side.
Linux side whether chroot or dual-boot offers the full functionalities which are bare bone (or dubious add-ons) in ChromeOS
network support like nfs/samba-windows network, printer connection...no need of google cloud printing etc, alternative browser, mail clients, video players.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @09:33PM
I did mine on the first day i got it.. then found it was mostly pointless.
If you mostly do stuff online, might as well use native chrome apps ( or remote desktop.. ). If you are doing dev work, and use Linux side for that so you can do it locally, its too slow, and kills the battery..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @10:05AM
Here is a good account of Gentoo users experiences with Google's Chromebook Pixel:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Google_Chromebook_Pixel_LTE [gentoo.org]