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Ask Slashdot: Most Chromebook-Like Unofficial ChromeOS Experience?
An anonymous reader writes: I am interested in Chromebooks, for the reasons that Google successfully pushes them: my carry-around laptops serve mostly as terminals, rather than CPU-heavy workhorses, and for the most part the whole reason I'm on my computer is to do something that requires a network connection anyhow. My email is Gmail, and without particularly endorsing any one element, I've moved a lot of things to online services like DropBox. (Some offline capabilities are nice, but since actual Chromebooks have been slowly gaining offline stuff, and theoretically will gain a lot more of that, soon, I no longer worry much about a machine being "useless" if the upstream connection happens to be broken or absent. It would just be useless in the same way my conventional desktop machine would be.) I have some decent but not high-end laptops (Core i3, 2GB-4GB of RAM) that I'd enjoy repurposing as Chromebooks without pedigree: they'd fall somewhat short of the high-end Pixel, but at no out-of-pocket expense for me unless I spring for some cheap SSDs, which I might.
So: how would you go about making a Chromebook-like laptop? Yes, I could just install any Linux distro, and then restrain myself from installing most apps other than a browser and a few utilities, but that's not quite the same; ChromeOS is nicely polished, and very pared down; it also seems to do well with low-memory systems (lots of the current models have just 2GB, which brings many Linux distros to a disk-swapping crawl), and starts up nicely quick.
It looks like the most "authentic" thing would be to dive into building Chromium OS (which looks like a fun hobby), but I'd like to find something more like Cr OS — only Cr OS hasn't been updated in quite a while. Perhaps some other browser-centric pared-down Linux would work as well. How would you build a system? And should I go ahead and order some low-end 16GB SSDs, which I now see from online vendors for less than $25?
So: how would you go about making a Chromebook-like laptop? Yes, I could just install any Linux distro, and then restrain myself from installing most apps other than a browser and a few utilities, but that's not quite the same; ChromeOS is nicely polished, and very pared down; it also seems to do well with low-memory systems (lots of the current models have just 2GB, which brings many Linux distros to a disk-swapping crawl), and starts up nicely quick.
It looks like the most "authentic" thing would be to dive into building Chromium OS (which looks like a fun hobby), but I'd like to find something more like Cr OS — only Cr OS hasn't been updated in quite a while. Perhaps some other browser-centric pared-down Linux would work as well. How would you build a system? And should I go ahead and order some low-end 16GB SSDs, which I now see from online vendors for less than $25?
http://chromixium.org/
So: how would you go about making a Chromebook-like laptop? Yes, I could just install any Linux distro, and then restrain myself from installing most apps other than a browser and a few utilities, but that's not quite the same; ChromeOS is nicely polished, and very pared down;
It's not the same, it's better.
it also seems to do well with low-memory systems (lots of the current models have just 2GB, which brings many Linux distros to a disk-swapping crawl), and starts up nicely quick.
Oh fuck off. I'm no Linux fanoboi, but I dare you to list the distros (and installed packages) that you based your "disk-swapping crawl" on.
Starting up quickly has a lot more to do with the BIOS/UEFI/firmware than the OS, especially on solid state media. Further, how is startup time a comparison point when you previously stated you only "might" include some "cheap" SSDs? And if you do intend to shell out some money, why would you not also consider upgrading the RAM?
It seems like you know the answer - use stripped down Linux and do whatever the fuck you want - but you just wanted an excuse to jerk off about ChromeOS.
Repeatedly hitting my ballsack, and sometimes my shaft, with a hammer is how using ChromeOS feels to me. So if you want the ChromeOS experience, but without ChromeOS, maybe you could just hit your groin with a hammer?
Somehow you failed to tell us whether you are planning to use this:
1) like a mobile device, with access only to cloud services
2) like a thin client, where you VPN into your "real desktop" sitting safe at home or work
(If "both", pick #2).
Run it on my laptops. Here you go: http://chromixium.org/
Seriously? Linux distros need more than 2GBs of RAM to run? No too long ago I was running Linux just fine with 512MB of RAM.
So you want a Chromebook-like laptop? Just install Firefox. In a few more release cycles I'm sure it'll be utterly indistinguishable from a Chromebook.
Chromixium is a project to recreate the functionality, look and feel of Google’s Chrome OS on a conventional desktop, GNU/Linux base system. It is based on Ubuntu.
From chromixium.org:
"Chromixium combines the elegant simplicity of the Chromebook with the flexibility and stability of Ubuntu’s Long Term Support release."
Seriously, I wouldn't bother. It makes no sense.
The Chromebooks available are dirt cheap, good-looking, light-weight, run for 8 hours and longer and have their OS tailored to light-weight power-saving CPUs and built around the computers it runs on - sorta like Apple. Chromebooks basically are the poor mans mac-book air. And if ChromeOS fits your bill and you have no problem with your OS basically being a remote extension of the todays online service known as Google you should go right ahead and one of those available. That current one from HP looks pretty neat, for instance.
As for the dabbling, I'd go exactly the other way around: Get a ready-made buy-unpack-works Chromebook and install Crouton on it for Linux freedom pleasure. Don't be silly and try to build your own. It will be shitty, lots of work, short on battery life, weigh a ton, look like crap and be expensive in comparsion.
Mind you, I did just get two refurbished ThinkPads for Linux progging and fiddling, but those are definitely not meant for lugging around. They each weigh well over 2kg and run 4 hours on a full-charge at most and are power-hogs in compasion. Good for proggin C/C++, running LAMP at full throttle (ones got 18GB, a Quad-Core Intel iSomething in it with a 256GB SSD) or playing Fallout 3 on Wine with the GFX all maxed out. ... a server (duh) at work.
I do *not* use them for everyday utility computing though. One actually serves as
My everyday computing, mail and leisure surfing I do on a 10" Yoga 2 Android tablet. Even lighter than a Chromebook and runs 18 hours under full load. ... Have you thought about something like that? That might actually be an alternative. Although ChromeOS does seem to be a better fit for your useage.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Simple .. you start with "B".
Otherwise what you have is "A" sort of like "B", but with compromises.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It seems to me the attraction of a chromebook is a solid state, light, durable machine for around $200,with wifi, and immediate start up, and all day battery life. The weight is around a MacBook Air, but at 1/5 the price. So I do not see how repurposing a laptop will result in any advantage other then integration with the Google stack. Using a chrome browser and logging in would accomplish much of this. Ubuntu seems to have variations that have recommended usage at or below 2GB.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Arch linux with openbox/Cinnamon/XFCE would do this just fine. Set a browser to start in full screen mode and you're done. If you want a little more I've been doing something similar with Arch and LXQT(this is experimental but mostly stable) and it's super snappy. Once you're set up you're ready to go and it works with whatever settings you're giving it. I'm running this with a Dell Inspiron 1525 and it's really quick comparatively and lets me run some lower specced games that wouldn't run under Windows. Downside is that if you're trying to run Gnome or KDE is going to be a bit heavy, if you're going the linux route you're going to be using something pared down. Chromium is a decent browser, but I personally think Opera has it better, especially since it's very compatible with Chrome apps and comes with some nifty features out of the box. With Arch you also get the AUR, which honestly is one of the best things about Arch aside from their amazing wiki. If you do end up doing this hit up the Arch Linux group on Facebook and I'll be happy to help you out in any way I can, if it doesn't seem like it's for you, that's cool too and I wish you the best.
Until a little over a year ago I used Debian on a Thinkpad X41 with 2GB RAM and a 1.6GHz Pentium M single core processor as my regular notebook. I has a 256GB MSATA drive on a IDE adapter which allows it to boot pretty quickly.
with low-memory systems (lots of the current models have just 2GB, which brings many Linux distros to a disk-swapping crawl)
If you consider ("just"!?) 2GB as "low-memory" (!) then i think you are already in the wrong path for your "repurposing" quest, but anyway: the "disk-swapping crawl" is easily solved by disabling swap - swap is not needed so much for your use case (as you describe it, and as i understand it), and disabling swap (a dying craft i am afraid...) has a long tradition in the "repurposing" art!
You can do it either using the "swapoff/swapon" commands (more permanently in something like the "/etc/fstab"), or even by not having a swap partition.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
How about not wearing a trilby two sizes too small for you, you metrosexual hipster shitcock?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Option A: Just get Chromebook. Except for the Chromebook Pixel they are ridiculously cheap, so you have little to loose.
Option B: Get Chrome for Windows. I have never tried this for myself, but you can enable a Chrome-OS like mode on Windows. For Windows 8/8.1 it is called Metro-mode. Windows 7 support appears to be still under development, correct me on this one. Never heard about support for this on Linux, except in, you know, Chrome OS.
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2762879?hl=en
I personally like the ideal of Chromebooks a very basic system that runs a browser and uses mostly web based apps and now even a few apps that can run
without internet. But for me the limitation that your stuck in a Google world is the bad taste for me. I used to use Chromebook's but I have since moved on to a HPO Stream with Windows OS. Even though some sigh at running Windows its the OS with the most applications out there. Everyone does either software or apps for Windows OS on a PC. Linux is just not that great for stuff like Skype, iTunes, Amazon streaming, Netflix, Hulu and some weather apps I use that are strictly Windows only. I still think many could easily work with a Chromebook and personally from experience I would probably still run Chrome OS then try to hack in a Linux version. Mainly because of the lower spec'd hardware with most Chromebooks I just don't find they run Linux really well. Same can be said for running a full Windows on the Stream 11. The Atom/Celeron chip and 2GB ram is rather limiting.
You can get an HP 14" with 4gb RAM and 16GB ssd for around $200. Like others have said, cobbling together a homebrew chromebook is probably going to result in something with worse battery life and a raft of other issues.
Considering what they cost it's not worth screwing around with it.
I picked up an HP 14" Chromebook refurb for ~ $200 and it's great; it replaced a Samsung 11" and switching to the new box was as simple as logging in.
get a new u2f yubikey and make your google login 2 factor
https://xkcd.com/1504/
Koans and fables for the software engineer
My first impression was, "WTF?! Why would anyone want to do that?" Keep in mind that not only am I typing this on a Chromebook, I basically live on this thing. For what I use it for, it works well. With a web based IDE and an SSH client, you can accomplish almost anything. Entertainment is not a pleasant situation but that's what we have gaming PCs for, right?
ChromeOS does actually have some nice features. It's nice to have updates that only take fifteen seconds, including a full reboot. The battery life is great, and it's really cool to be able to sit down at a brand-new Chromebook, type your google username and password in, and have all of your bookmarks, apps, and files available within 30 seconds. The thing is, I really don't think you're going to be able to get those same features with any other combination of hardware and software. As you point out, the boot speeds are likely not going to be any faster, and I would be surprised to learn that the non-Google versions of ChromeOS had the same, ah, vendor lock-in.
I'm very ambivalent about ChromeOS. It looks nice, it's very secure, it has a number of good features, and I feel like it is particularly good for schools. I've been able to make my Chromebook do what I want, and having a pair of them was really great for wandering around Central America for a year or so doing freelance web development. They're cheap enough to be more-or-less disposable. On the other hand, it's very much not a replacement for a real operating system. The good thing is that it sounds like the OP doesn't need a real operating system. The bad thing is that he probably isn't going to get what he likes about ChromeOS out of this either, no matter what he does. A stripped-down distro is probably the better option.
As an aside, I also share your sentiments with regards to the swapping issue. I've had a bunch of netbooks in addition to this Chromebook, and I've had real Linux running on this machine via both crouton and a direct install. With ChromeOS, I can only have 30-40 tabs open before it starts killing tabs to free up memory, and fewer than that if the pages are resource-heavy like gmail, disqus threads, or videos. In my experience ChromeOS has far more memory issues than other distos on the same or worse hardware. However, I will say that ChromeOS's failure mode of killing pages early and often works very well to prevent the machine from ever becoming unresponsive due to memory/swap issues. It's kinda hard to pick between those two problems, to be honest.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Windows is FAR more efficient with hardware than Linux is. It generally has better drivers, a more efficient kernel and less useless overhead. Your claims about LXLE are either a major exaggeration or extremely atypical. I've seen dozens of people switch from Linux BACK to Windows because of various problems. It's funny, after almost 20 years now, Linux ***still*** cannot play back full screen content without jitteryness and tearing. Linux is fine as a toy OS or for low-reliability, highly redundant servers (with corresponding expensive support) but it sucks ass as a desktop. Always has, always will.
If you just want to make the older lappies useable, I'd try Lubuntu. I have it running on an old Celeron M 420 (CPU mark - 345!) and it's totally workable. You have all the Ubuntu packages available, but the basic install is reasonably trim.
...are not Open Source and You will not be able to get them. If you want Chrome OS for its finish and features buy a ChromeBook.
If you want to reuse an older laptop get a newer SSD for it and install a LXDE based distro.
No hardware or software requirements?
Perhaps this is more your speed:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wyse-W...
The Secure Shell extension for Chrome gets you a usable terminal and SSH client. If you need to edit files locally, vim is available too, along with several text editors. There are a couple of git clients floating around if you want to edit stuff with source control.
This isn't such a good option for me. I use LaTeX on my chromebook and want to compile stuff. I want to use sed and awk and wc. I currently use Crouton, though I'm probably going to install Chromixium instead.
it also seems to do well with low-memory systems (lots of the current models have just 2GB, which brings many Linux distros to a disk-swapping crawl), and starts up nicely quick.
I am in the midst of building a CarPC right now, as parts trickle in from far-flung regions of the globe, which is to say mostly HK. I'm saving my money for the display so it's a budget build based on a Boxer DA078L motherboard. I downgraded the processor to IIRC a X2 3800+ from a 3900+ because the specific processor model I ordered had almost 30W lower TDP, bringing the total system TDP down well under 100W which meant I could use a PicoPSU 120. I haven't tested my el cheapo 300W (headroom! which I will leave unused) boost-buck regulator yet, that's next. It has 2GB of RAM and I installed Kodibuntu, then installed navit. It comes with chromium and I am running the system on an 8GB CF card, currently in a USB adapter and soon in a SATA adapter. Maybe someday I'll buy it a real SSD but again, this is just a pocket change build based on something I had already. A $8 low-profile AM2/3 cooler is coming.
Why care? I can run Kodi and navit at the same time with no problems, using compiz as my window manager. and it can easily run chromium under LXDE. And I have no swap whatsoever. It would be dog-slow on my CF card (It's a "133X" Transcend, whatever that means) and I don't want to beat up my flash device anyway.
2GB is a lot of RAM. It seems like it isn't because of all the crap we run these days. But 2GB will actually go hilariously far if you use a limited desktop environment, or in fact none at all. If you just put the smallest Linux you can come up with (puppy?) into a partition with chromium, make init keep X running and make X keep chromium running, you'll have what you're looking for. I presume the only reason to want this is to have it as a multiboot option, since as others have said, if you wanted an actual chromebook you would have bought one. To come back around to my long introductory paragraph, I installed Kodibuntu when I wanted automotive navigation. That seems dumb, but it makes sense in the view of trying not to buy stuff. I also wanted more CPU power and didn't care about GPU power, so it made sense to me not to buy a Pi 2 and use a turnkey solution. (That's where I got the pointer to the skin I'm using.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
10 inch EEE PC with chrome OS
With a web based IDE and an SSH client, you can accomplish almost anything.
But unless you go the Crouton route, what are you SSHing to? If you have your Chromebook open on the bus, you don't have an Internet connection unless you're paying for a mobile broadband plan. And you still have to pay to lease a server on which to run your "web based IDE and an SSH client".
Swap was awesome back when RAM was expensive. RAM is now really cheap
Provided your device's RAM slots aren't already filled with the largest stick that your device can take. And provided your device even has RAM slots at all; a lot of smaller mobile PCs nowadays have soldered-on RAM.
If a quick Google search can be believed, you can actually get a free VPS. For an IDE I'm using Cloud9, but there are equally good or better alternatives. However, I am already paying for mobile data and a VPS for other reasons. Even so, I'd still probably get out my laptop on a bus only if it was a Google bus. Or maybe Greyhound, if it had wifi. I very rarely find myself without an Internet connection, even in rural Central America. When I don't have an Internet connection, generally I'm not doing anything where I care about having one.
It's not even that I couldn't code without the Internet; there are code editors for Chrome/ChromeOS. However, not having access to API documentation would be a huge issue (for my work), and that would make OS deficiencies a moot point.
I need the Internet for work. Having to have a net connection in order to use a decent IDE is not ideal, but it's a low bar even in rural Central America, or rural Alaska. I don't really understand what it is about the idea of an Internet-only device that bothers you so much, but I am actually pretty sure that you would be less inconvenienced than you imagine.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I am already paying for mobile data and a VPS for other reasons. Even so, I'd still probably get out my laptop on a bus only if it was a Google bus.
Citilink buses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, do not offer Wi-Fi. They don't even run at night or on Sundays, to give you a sense of the system's scope. I currently happen not to subscribe to mobile Internet access, and even if I did, the carrier would likely charge twice: once for a phone and the tethering surcharge for a Chromebook. And how much data does your preferred web-based IDE use per hour? I don't want to end up paying for overages.
I need the Internet for work.
So do I. But my day job is at an office with wired Internet. The hobby programming projects that I work on using my laptop while riding the bus to and from work require only intermittent access to the Internet, as I have downloaded API docs for use locally.
I don't really understand what it is about the idea of an Internet-only device that bothers you so much
If there is no way to write and test code on an offline Chromebook, then switching from my present laptop to a Chromebook would either cost me hundreds of dollars per year or force me to find something else to do for an hour and a half a day.
but I am actually pretty sure that you would be less inconvenienced than you imagine.
Does a Chromebook offer a way to write and test code offline, other than through Crouton?
Didn't tethering fees get clobbered by the FCC? The IDE is pretty light on bandwidth, the initial pageload is about 2 MB and it's just shuffling text around during use. It has a keep-alive ping, but otherwise you're only going to use bandwidth while saving changes or using the terminal. How much bandwidth does a terminal use? I recently signed up with PTel, which uses T-mobile's towers and gives you unlimited 3g / 1 GB 4g for $35/mo, no contract. I think a month's worth of coding would run substantially under 1 GB of bandwidth but I don't really have the time to do a rigorous test.
I found interpreters for Python and Brainfuck on the Chrome Store, and of course you have a JS interpreter, and any interpreters written in JS should probably work. There are rather a large number of those for some reason. There's some sort of git app too, FWIW. Beyond that there are a few Android apps that will run natively on ChromeOS without any fussing, and most Android apps can be made to run with minimal effort.
I don't know what you're coding in, but unless it's fairly obscure I'd say it's possible to code and test, offline, using a Chromebook. Either way I hope no one is twisting your arm to get you to buy one.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.