Installing another os
For our final act of defiance we install Linux on bare Chrome – or try to.
Well, we’ve seen a variety of ways in which you can make your Chromebook do things it’s not really supposed to. But there’s probably one more thing you’re itching to do – and we’d get lynched if we didn’t include it. Yep: install Linux so that it boots right off the bat. Developer Mode enables you, on some hardware anyway, to boot from USB, but it turns out there’s an easier way in the form of Chrx.
You’ll still need to be in Developer Mode in order to proceed with this madness, but you won’t need a USB stick or SD card – which is handy because the Pixel Slate has no such interfaces, and all the USB-C adapters at Future Towers have been horded by some unknown and possibly dangerous entity. Even if you’re already in Developer Mode, your device will be wiped.
Not all models are supported so check https:// github.com/reynhout/chrx#chromebooks before proceeding. It’s possible you’ll need or want to do a firmware update in order for things to go smoothly. Once you’re satisfied or at least optimistic that things will work, open up Crosh with Ctrl+alt+t and run shell
as before. Next download the Chrx script to our home directory and run it:
$ cd
$ curl -Os https://chrx.org/go
$ sh go
You may be asked to describe your device. You’ll then have to decide how much space to devote to the Linux partition; we opted for a frugal (tell that to my
20MB Amiga drive–ed) 20GB. After this the device will reboot and claim to be repairing itself (it’s actually repartitioning the storage per our request), which may take some time. So consider using this time to up antioxidant levels with a cup of tea.
Assuming that worked, you’ll need to run the code above again – the script will have been summarily deleted, along with all other stateful data. This time you’ll be shown the distro and locale settings. By default Galliumos will be installed, which will involve a lot of downloading and possibly another hot beverage. Once you reboot, hit Ctrl+l at the OS verification
warning screen to (hopefully) launch Gallium. You should be able to log in with chrx for both username and password. Galliumos is designed especially for Chromebooks; it’s based on Xubuntu, so features the lightweight Xfce desktop, and actually integrates Chromium OS’S CMT touchpad driver, so that delightfully swipey experience need not be lost.
It includes a number of performance improvements and Chromebook-specific fixes that haven’t yet made it to other distros. The sad news is that it’s for Intel Chromebooks only, but if you have an Arm device, don’t fret – other distributions are available to be used.
Galliumos can be installed either the old-fashioned way (which would nix Chrome OS entirely, but also enables other operating systems to be installed alongside it), or via the handy Chrx utility. Chrx enables you to dual-boot distros with Chromeos, so you get the best of both worlds.
Furthermore, this approach is quite robust: you’re unlikely to brick your system (but never say never), or be required to do an emergency Chrome OS recovery to get things back to normal. Besides Galliumos, Chrx can install most Ubuntu flavours and Fedora.