Turn your old Chromebook into a full blown Ubuntu Linux laptop with Crouton
Google’s support for ChromeOS has been waning lately and some of the most popular Chromebook models like my Acer C720 which was probably the most popular device among developers at one point in time won’t receive the update which lets you run Android apps on ChromeOS so these devices have officially no future even though my Chromebook still works fine and has a lot of life left in it.
But worry not, now is a great time to see what you can still do unofficially with your Chromebook to keep using it for many years to come. And in my opinion the best way to get more out of your Chromebook now and in the future is using Crouton to install Ubuntu (or Debian) onto your Chromebook. You will still be able to use ChromeOS and you can switch between Ubuntu and ChromeOS instantly with a keyboard shortcut.
And even cooler, you can also run Ubuntu inside of a Chrome tab in ChromeOS. If you don’t install a browser, ChromeOS’ browser will automatically be used which saves space and RAM and is also much more comfortable when using Ubuntu in a Chrome tab.
You can even run single apps in tabs. Here I'm running the Pharo Smalltalk-80 programming language environment in a tab:
The only downside to using Ubuntu in a tab is that graphics won’t be hardware accelerated, so no gaming. But it’s more than enough for everything else and you can always switch between the modes if you need to.
The process of using Crouton on a Chromebook is quite easy, can be reversed, and doesn’t take much time, less than half an hour. I did it last night while half asleep in preparation for this article. But it’s not for everyone and unless your Chromebook is already in developer mode, all your files will be deleted during the process. You should know your way around the command line at the very least when planning to use Crouton, but if you want to use Linux you probably do. Read this article to the end first and decide for yourself if you think this is something you feel comfortable doing.
Let’s do it then!
Disclaimer
I make no guarantees that this guide works, you are responsible for your own actions, use this guide on your own risk and make backups of everything so that you won’t lose data. If you read this a long time after it was written, verify that the guide is still up to date by comparing it to the official instructions on Crouton’s website.
With that out of the way…
Backup all the things!
The first step is to backup all your data. On Chromebooks you probably only have data in your “Downloads” folder, the Google Drive folder is already backed up to the cloud of course and as long as you have sync configured in Chrome, all of your bookmarks and apps are as well. So copy those files you still need somewhere because unless you already have Developer mode enabled on your Chromebook, all of your files on your Chromebook are going to be deleted during the process.
Next you want to create a backup of your actual ChromeOS on a USB stick, just to be safe in case something goes terrible wrong. Unlikely, but better to be safe than sorry. You can do that with Google’s Chromebook recovery utility. It will delete anything that is on the USB stick, but the stick doesn’t need to be that big, I believe 8 GB is enough, so you probably have an old USB stick lying around somewhere that you can use for this.
Go into developer mode
After you’ve created the recovery USB, go to this Wiki, look for your Chromebook model and find out which keys you need to press to get into developer mode. I explain the method for the Acer C720 here:
Hold down Crtrl + Refresh (that’s the F3 key) and tap the power button to reboot into recovery mode.
Press Ctrl + d to go into developer mode.
Press Enter to confirm that all files on your Chromebook will be deleted
Follow the instructions, all your files are deleted and you start with a fresh ChromeOS installation, now with Developer mode enabled. Setup your internet, login and wait for all of your bookmarks and apps to sync.
Note: You will have to press Ctrl+d every time after rebooting your Chromebook to start ChromeOS. Don't press space after rebooting when the screen asks you to, or your drive will be deleted and ChromeOS restored in non-developer mode. That's apparently a feature, not a bug.
Installing & Using crouton
Download Crouton here. That link should always point to the latest version.
Next you want to install the Crouton extension which makes Ubuntu work nicely together with ChromeOS.
Now open a shell by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T, and type shell at the prompt.
Now you are ready to install Ubuntu. You can get a list of the different Ubuntu versions available using:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -r list
You should probably just go with the default, which is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. You can install the newest Ubuntu but it’s not officially supported by crouton yet so you might run into problems. You can install multiple Linux versions with crouton easily though, so just try it out later when you’re familiar with it and see if it works for you.
To see a list of targets (different bundles of software to install) enter:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -t list
I chose to install xiwi, that is what lets you run Ubuntu in a tab in ChromeOS which is what I prefer, xorg which is the normal gpu accelerated X window server, and xfce4 because it’s a very lightweight Desktop Environment, only 250 Mb. If you want the normal Ubuntu experience you should choose unity-desktop instead which is over a gigabyte in size but comes with all the apps that Ubuntu normally comes with.
To start the download and installation:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -t xiwi,xorg,xfce4
Crouton will now download all the files, install them (takes a while, 10 to 20 minutes I’d say) and then ask you to enter a username and a password for your new Ubuntu user account. After that, you can start your fresh Ubuntu install!
sudo startxfce4
This will open xfce4 in a fullscreen window if you used the xiwi target like I did, or switch to a fully GPU accelerated xorg server if you didn’t. To get back in the latter case, press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Back to cycle between ChromeOS and Ubuntu. If you used xiwi, you can just press the fullscreen key on your Chromebook to go out of fullscreen mode and see the Window instead. If you prefer Ubuntu to be run in a tab instead of its own window (which is really cool!), use this command instead of sudo startxfce4:
sudo startxfce4 -X xiwi-tab
That’s a capital -X. And if you used Unity as the target instead of xfce4, use startunityin place of startxfce4 for the commands. You can of course enter fullscreen mode in this Ubuntu tab just like any other ChromeOS tab using the fullscreen key on your keyboard.
If you want to play a game and therefore need the GPU acceleration of xorg, shut down your Ubuntu and then start it again with this command:
sudo startxfce4 -X xorg
And if you want to open an app in a new ChromeOS tab, open a Terminal in Ubuntu and use the command:
xiwi -T yourapp
You can even do this without starting the Desktop Environment first. To do that, instead of using sudo startxfce4:
sudo enter-chroot
This will boot you into a command prompt without a GUI. Then you can use xiwi -T yourapp to open an app in a new tab.
There is a lot more crouton can do, so check the wiki at some point to learn more about it. It’s very easy to create backups of your Ubuntu installation with Crouton, install multiple different Ubuntus you can easily switch between and much more.
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Hello & Cheers!! I'm a content detection and information bot. You are receiving this reply because a short link or links have been detected in your post/comment. The purpose of this message is to inform your readers and yourself about the use of and dangers of short links.
To the readers of the post: Short links are provided by url shortening services. The short links they provide can be useful in some cases. Generally their use is benign. But as with all useful tools there are dangers. Short links can be used to hide all sorts of things. Quite frequently they are used to hide referral links for instance. While not dangerous this can be deceptive. They can also be used to hide dangerous links such as links to phishing sites, sites loaded with malware, scam sites, etc. You should always be extremely cautious before clicking on one. If you don't know and trust the poster don't click. Even if you do you should still be cautious and wary of any site you are sent to. It's always better to visit the site directly and not through a short link.
To the author of the post: While short links may be useful on some sites they are not needed on steemit. You can use markdown to format your links such as this link to steemit. It's as simple as
[steemit](https://steemit.com)Unlike short links this allows the reader to see where they are going by simply hovering over the link before they click on it.