Warning Chromebook Users

booman

booman

Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming
Staff member
I have been using ChrUbuntu (Ubuntu Precise 12.04) on my Acer C710 Chromebook for over a year now.
I had to switch Chromebook to "Developer Mode" so I could install it.
Ran perfectly, updated and even played a few games (Torchlight, Wakfu, Half-Life 1, Lugaru)

One day I came home (after my wife tried to use it for internet) one day and found that it had booted to ChromeOS instead of ChrUbuntu. Stunned, shocked and confused I tried to restart and go to ChrUbuntu again, but failed over and over.

After some research I found that she accidentally disabled "Developer Mode" so now it booted to the ChromeOS partition. ChrUbuntu was still there and all my files were still there, but I didn't know how to restore it.
So I installed ChrUbuntu (Precise 12.04) again and has some bugs.
Then I thought, maybe Saucey 13.10 would be better.... nope, Unity was slow and buggy.
So once again I went back to Precise ChrUbuntu and everything is working as it was previously, but of course I had to install all the programs and games again. Then I had to restore all of my files from the server.

Little did I know there was a command you can run to start it back in ChrUbuntu again without having to wipe the drive.

If you have this problem try this:
  1. enable developer mode
  2. Boot up and don't login to ChromeOS
  3. CTRL+ALT+=> to access the shell
  4. Type:
    Code: 
    sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/mmcblk0
Now it should boot to ChrUbuntu again.
I havn't tried this myself, but there is a chance "Developer mode" will erase the drive to prepare it for OS installation. IF this happens, then there is no chance to boot to ChrUbuntu unless you install from scratch again.
 
I have a couple of questions for you:

is it possible to erase ChromeOS before installing ChrUbuntu (what a sh...y name) by formatting the hard drive, like in a normal laptop?

Is Unity (which I hate with a passion) the only available DE (I know it is only a shell) or can it be replaced by another one?
 
Yes of course. Just yank the hard drive and format on another computer.
I'm not sure how that will affect the firmware though.. so its at your own risk.
If the firmware is damaged then no Operating System will reside on that hard drive.

With ChrUbuntu Unity is the only Desktop Environment, but you can also install other versions of Ubuntu as well:
  • default -- ubuntu-desktop
  • kubuntu-desktop
  • lubuntu-desktop
  • xubuntu-desktop
  • edubuntu-desktop
  • ubuntu-standard -- no GUI installed
Just follow the directions on this ChromeOS Blog

I have to admit, when I installed ChrUbuntu 13.10 Unity really had some issues on my Chromebook. Probably the Intel HD 2000 not fully supporting all features.

I read about installing Cinnamon desktop environment, but there were reports of it crashing.
I may also try Openbox for some games, but I'm not sure if its supported as well.
The hardware is very limited as expected, but sure is nice having Linux on there.
The ChromeOS and hardware give you nothing more than a basic Android tablet capability.

Don't forget I have the Chromebook Acer C710 with a Pentium dual-core processor i386
A lot of Chromebooks have the ARM processor and Solid State internal drive.
There are also ChrUbuntu versions for these as well, but I'm not sure of the stability.

I rather have the 320 Gig drive instead of the 16 Gig SSD. Just my preference for now, but I've read that other have installed a 2.5in SSD drive and had better performance with ChromeOS and ChrUbuntu
 
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