USB Puppy in an Acer Chromebook

[Arrow]

At work we are getting new Chromebooks, easy to use workstations, sort of portable terminals. I sometimes end up with one of the older spare computers and at the moment the situation is not to my liking. My thoughts went straight to a possible Puppy linux solution as my personal desktop environment, portable between any computer-like device.

I have this week at home (due to corona enforced home office) to prepare my self for the new hardware. These are new Acer Chromebooks, I have only see the cardboard boxes as they were carried in last week and I assume they will be in circulation pretty soon. I think they will have 4GB RAM, but I can't say anything for sure, and I hope to boot from a USB storage unit. I have found a bit of info on youtube and various posts on the web but most is aimed at full harddrive installs. So far I haven't arrived at an approach to handle this.

A slight worry is the terminal window and sudo commands, I have done this in the past, mostly by typing in the commands from others guidelines. I see some boot into developer mode and access the terminal window form there. I assume there will be several ways about this once the clever guys are onto the challenge.

Any suggestion for someone who is completely new to chromebooks? My first aim is to find a boot option from USB and the work arounds for possibly no BIOS or boot option.

[Arrow]

No replies, so chromebooks are that tricky and no fun to work with

I know these are minimal things,often just used to surfe the web, but for some reason one of the staff at work got the idea that they would be a cheap and easy alternative, no cost for upkeep or upgrades.... I may bring my own computer and keep it in my drawer. It will be a while before the real IT people have set up anything else.

[peebee]

The first thing you need to find out is what architecture the cpu's are....... Chromebooks may have x86 (Intel etc) or may be Arm cpu's.

Puppy provides much greater support for x86 based systems .... there is one version - RasPup - that can run on Arm processors.

There are other problems with Chromebooks - they can have "proprietary" hardware that may not be supported by the Linux kernel and have specific boot systems.

There is work currently underway on Woof-CE (on github) to better support Arm Chromebooks (particularly the Asus C201 5year old Chromebook) with Puppy Linux by @dimkr
viewtopic.php?p=13821#p13821
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/1948

Just some considerations to think about............

[Wiz57]

bigpup has had some success getting Puppy running on Chromebooks, have a look at
this forum for tips.
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=431
Wiz

[dimkr]

Bear in mind that ARM and x86 Chromebooks are slightly different. The x86 models can boot from BIOS bootable drives (like flash drives with syslinux+MBR, etc'). The ARM models use depthcharge as the Coreboot payload, so the boot loader is part of the firmware, so to speak, and the bootable drive needs to contain two partitions (one for the kernel, one that is mounted at /), without a boot loader.

The work I'm doing for ARM Chromebook support will definitely benefit x86 Chromebooks (improved responsiveness, faster browsing, lower RAM usage, etc'), but there won't be special Puppy images for x86 Chromebooks (at least, for now), because they can boot from a regular Puppy drive.

By the way: you need to enable developer mode and USB boot first. There are many guides how to do this online. When you do this, you restore the device to its factory settings, so don't do this if you have files or settings you can't lose.

[mikewalsh]

Interesting article on the Chrome 'devices' firmware, here:-

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/de ... m-firmware

.....and an in-depth "presentation" on Depthcharge itself here:-

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/20 ... e5DakfU%3D

Mike.

[Arrow]

Thanks. I will not be able to check specs and hardware before the end of the week, and I shall give it a further try. I have been directed to Gallium.os as an option more directed at google books in particular, but it will only be an option for me if it's possible to boot as a running OS from a usb. Still, I shall see if I can make Puppy run. The links are very interesting and knowing others have had some progress makes it worth trying.

[joes]

Hi, I have a similar question.

I also have Acer Chromebook, C710 (code name Parrot)
With Intel Celeron 847, 2GB Ram and 256GB 2.5 HDD.

The thing is, I used https://coolstar.org/chromebook/windows ... Parrot-ivb
to flash to bios so I could install windows, and do I did.

But now, I would like to install BionicPup,
I can run BionicPup32 8.0 from a USB device.

But have no idea how to install it,
I will appreciate your help on how to do it!

[mouldy]

I have no personal experience with Chromebook, but have read many of newer ones can run both Android and Linux apps natively. How well they do this???? But devil in details. When you find exact model you are getting, you will know. Also is your IT dept going to block any unauthorized changes? Chromebooks are popular in schools cause they can control their use much easier and easily reflash them if there are problems. They just want you using them as a sort of thin client, not getting root control and doing anything creative under the hood.

[bigpup]

joes,

You need to start your own topic about your computer and issue.
Very, very, hard to help two people, with two different computers, in the same topic.
When you make your own topic.
Do you want to keep Windows installed?
Do you boot to a Windows boot menu and select booting Windows?

DO NOT answer here!!!
Start your own topic!!!!!

[Clarity]

@Arrow you can do us all a BIG favor: Do you have a model number of the Chromebook you are expecting? I will guess the CPU in it will be an Intel, but getting us the model number will be a enormously helpfful as there are so many versions of CPUs being built by Acer for education/business use. I am sure your work staff can share that info with you.

Hope this helps.