Developer Gets OpenSUSE Running On $249 Google Chromebook

sfcrazy writes "Andrew Wafaa, an ARM developer who is responsible for porting openSUSE to ARM, just got his hands on the Chromebook, and he managed to run openSUSE on it." Hopefully that means other distros can be soon ported to the Chromebook as well.

Comments

Ubuntu, too.

[The MAZZTer]

Though no X yet. http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2012/10/first-steps.html

Re:Ubuntu, too.

[Microlith]

Yup. This is what I had a mind to do, but the stupid GPU driver situation on ARM makes life more than a little painful.

Re:Ubuntu, too.

[Jmc23]

Not necessary for Emacs. I'd be tempted if SBCL ran well on arm (i have no idea), might make a nice portable dev machine.

Re:Ubuntu, too.

[MichaelSmith]

Sorry but chromeOS led me directly to the idea of a real emacsOS when I read your comment.

Why haven't OEMs caught on?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great idea - a lightweight, attractive, inexpensive ARM-powered notebook running GNU/Linux. But, I wonder why Samsung and others haven't bothered to "officially" offer it? I think a system like this, running KDE, could be very appealing to a present Windows 7 user, versus switching to a higher-priced system running Windows 8 and its unfamiliar "Modern" interface.

Re:Why haven't OEMs caught on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's an even more niche product than a Chromebook that have so far sold extremely poorly.

Re:Why haven't OEMs caught on?

[Microlith]

let's all wonder why Google hasn't officially offered to run another operating system on a machine made specifically for Google to run their OS on.

Good thing he didn't say Google but Samsung and others.

Re:Why haven't OEMs caught on?

[gmuslera]

If you have 2 niches in the same hardware you have more sells than offering just one. Opening the drivers mean that it could be sold to the 2 kinds of clients, or give your clients an alternative if they don't like the bundled one or at least don't fill all their needs.

Re:Why haven't OEMs caught on?

[DragonWriter]

This is a great idea - a lightweight, attractive, inexpensive ARM-powered notebook running GNU/Linux. But, I wonder why Samsung and others haven't bothered to "officially" offer it?

Because there's no software vendor that is both willing and able to put the money into polishing, marketing, and supporting a "GNU/Linux" style operating system the way Microsoft is doing with Windows 8/RT or Google is with Android/ChromeOS, and hardware vendors want to stick to their core competency rather than trying to software developmenet, support, and marketing organizations, so "GNU/Linux" type of operating systems, when they are available preinstalled at all, are generally niche items either from smaller vendors or targetted to specialized market and not the mass consumer market.

Re:Why haven't OEMs caught on?

[Chrisq]

Because no one but nerds actually want a Chromebopk.

I'd like any kind of bopk

News???

[Jmc23]

All this guy did was follow somebody elses directions.

Keep those quality stories coming Timothy.

Re:News???

[WankersRevenge]

News? Of course this is news. Someone out there actually RTFM. Personally, I'm surprised this isn't the story of the decade.

This is what it takes to get in the news?

[CyberKnet]

Step 1. Buy a Chromebook
Step 2. Use ChromeOS for half a day.
Step 3. Follows instructions you got from SOMEONE ELSE (a Google-employed developer, at that) on how to load openSUSE onto a Chromebook.
Step 4. Enjoy being on slashdot front page getting credit for what someone else told you how to do.

Geez.

Ran it on my $189 eeePc 3 years ago

[Andy Prough]

Cold-start to reading Slashdot in 12 seconds flat with KDE Plasma Netbook. Because I could, that's why.

Re:Why not Debian?

[marcello_dl]

I guess the feat is not to redo some porting of code to arm, which debian has done, but to configure the system/add drivers to support the chromebook.
IMHO if chromebook wants to sell more than a tablet it must work as a real laptop, and a linux distro is at the moment the only way to have a complete personal computing experience on arm.

Re:Shocking!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Chromebook lets you turn it off. Unlike Windows ARM tablets.

Man this place is full of Microsoft shills these days.

Re:Impressive.

[OrangeTide]

Try installing Windows XP on your Window RT device.

Re:Why not Debian?

[lkcl]

IMHO if chromebook wants to sell more than a tablet it must work as a real laptop, and a linux distro is at the moment the only way to have a complete personal computing experience on arm.

this is only really going to happen when ARM SoC vendors get out of the "vertical market" mentality, and stop trying to control everything. this is a really in-depth topic so i'll describe it briefly (yes, briefly - despite appearances)

the problem is that ARM SoCs have typically come from the "embedded" space, as "appliances", where android is now also considered to be an "appliance". what that means is that typically a device is designed by the SoC vendor themselves (a "reference design"), the software is written by the SoC vendor themselves, and the whole package sold, usually as a GPL-violating product, to factories who do NOT have ANY software expertise AT ALL.

these factories receive a set of instructions:
1) make PCB
2) assemble PCB in case
3) insert "boot sd/mmc card" to flash OS onto device
4) pack in box
5) sell box.

the chromebook is absolutely *no* exception to this.

what we're doing with the Rhombus Tech initiative, through the EOMA-68 hardware specification, is drawing a line in the sand, where the CPU is now on a Credit-Card-sized "module" along with the RAM and NAND Flash, but that's only half the story. because the CPU Cards can go into literally *any* EOMA-68-compliant mass-volume device, the CPU *has* to be considered to be "General Purpose". every CPU *has* to be "open" (or, alternatively, the burden is on the proprietary software vendor (e.g. apple or microsoft) or on the GPL-violating vendor to support literally every possible combination of devices that could possibly be out there or imagined).

so we're turning things around: turning SoCs back towards where they ought to be (and are already in the x86 world): general-purpose processors that can run any OS.

Re:Why not Debian?

[mmontour]

Maybe he just prefers SuSE?

Several years ago, I ported SuSE onto my PowerPC iBook G3 because I liked it and it was the distro I ran on my main desktop machine.

("porting" in this case mostly meant bootstrapping a build environment and working around a few bugs. The source RPMs already had PPC build targets.)

Re:Why not Debian?

[fm6]

The point of the Chromebook is not to sell hardware. The point of the Chromebook is to sell the Google model of doing everything on the cloud. Selling cheap systems running a "real laptop" OS is an unprofitable low-margin business that's of no interest even to hardware companies, never mind a services company like Google.

Hackers are hacking Chromebooks because they're hackers. The commercial viability of the combination is nil.

Nice!

[MetalliQaZ]

Suddenly I care about the Chromebook!