adventures with a chromebook [wall o text]
1 message · started by Devi Garcia on Nov 27, 2017
adventures with a chromebook [wall o text]
From Devi Garcia · Nov 27, 2017
so since i've never used a chromebook but always wanted too i took the one Rex got from Bill and played with it.. enabling dev mode.. which increased the usefulness of it by adding the playstore and allowing me to install android applications.. but this wasn't enough.. so i played with crouton which Rex had working with Lubuntu.. i got one chroot working with xenial and budgie.. but i ended up having issues with it installing nothing but the actual desktop and nothing else.. and once i installed the software center i kept having policy errors allowing me to install nothing.. but i did get this working with the chrome extension to easily switch from chromeos to that with a click from the browser... i attempted again with lxde and artful but that went fullscreen immediately and i couldn't figure out how to minimize it without rebooting the pc....
me being me though i wanted to get into the bios modifications that are out there for actual linux installs that replaces chromeos.. this required me to open the whole laptop and pop off the keyboard and unscrew a screw on the motherboard that write protects the emmc.. so i initially tried "john lewis's" RW_LEGACY mod.. which allows a legacy bios to boot and i got Solus3 budgie fully installed/updated and working.. with no issues other than no audio device.. after a few hours of trying various fixes/replacing files to get the audio working.. i tried "MrChromeBox" RW_LEGACY mod which is suppose to be newer/better.. and still no audio devices and i even tried the headphone port to make sure that didn't work either... i did notice tho this other guys had full rom support for the chromebook i had... which completely erases and rewrites the bios to a modded one with full UEFI support to even allow windows installs on the chromebook.. so i tried this one.. and it worked without bricking the laptop.. YAY and i tried my solus3 usb wouldn't boot but to the bios settings.. so i made a antergos/arch usb bootable and got that installed after some issues of arch not wanting to see the internal emmc drives.. after i got that installed.. my bios never booted past the first screen regardless of the installed OS and when i looked into the bios settings all were set right...