Created: Apr, 2015
Last Updated: Apr, 2016
Benefits of Chromebooks:
Make it run on Linux will be perfect. I used to use Crouton. But as of 2016, GalliumOS turns out to be a better option for me because it is a full-blown Linux on Chromebook hardware.
Go to GalliumOS Wiki for instructions. It is likely you need to open the Chromebook case to unblock the 3rd-party firmware flashing.
[Update 2016] I no longer use Crouton because I prefer a full-fledged Linux. But it doesn’t mean Crouton is not a good option for you.
Crouton is a chroot environment piggy-backing on the ChromeOS (aka, it is not a full Linux). Because of the limited memory space on Chromebook, I usually install Crouton in an external USB drive as follows.
First enable developer’s mode. This will result in a complete reset of the current ChromeOS including all of the data.
Insert USB drive, create a “chroot” directory and symbolically link to “/usr/local”
cd /usr/local
sudo mkdir /media/removable/USB_DRIVE_NAME/chroots
sudo ln -s /media/removable/USB_DRIVE_NAME/chroots chroots
This is because Crouton installer will look for and install binaries to “/usr/local/chroots” by default.
Download Crouton via https://goo.gl/fd3zc as said in Crouton’s Github.
Install a distribution with selected desktop environment:
cd /home/user/XXXX/Downloads
sudo sh crouton -r trusty -t cli-extra # this ditches X environment
To have a list of supported distributions, run:
sh crouton -r list
To have a list of available desktop environments, run:
sh crouton -t help
For more command line options, refer to Crouton command line cheatsheet @ Crouton Wiki.
sudo enter-chroot
To start Linux with LXDE, do
sudo startlxde
The former is quicker than latter.