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Ask Slashdot: Most Chromebook-Like Unofficial ChromeOS Experience?

Posted by Soulskill on from the get-your-company-to-pay-for-it-wink-wink dept.

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?

18 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Check out Chromixium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://chromixium.org/

  2. I wouldn't bother. by Qbertino · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    I do *not* use them for everyday utility computing though. One actually serves as ... a server (duh) at work.

    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
  3. Re:WTF are you trying to do, exactly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My main grip with ChromeOS is that it tries to needlessly tie you to cloud services when perfectly functional local or LAN equivalents exist. Network computing is a great idea. It's also an OLD idea. Resources should be as close to the device as possible. The first ring of your cloud should be your own home network.

  4. Re:Oh Fuck Off by SJHillman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I just put a SSD in my 9 year old ThinkPad T60 and took that as an opportunity to switch from Windows 7 to LXLE (Lubuntu based) on it. It *flies* now and I can actually watch Netflix on it fullscreen - it pegs the CPU pretty hard but doesn't get A/V sync issues like it did on Windows. It has 2.5GB RAM, but I've yet to use half that even with quite a few tabs open in Chrome (not Chromium). The only other things I have installed are Dropbox, Remmina (RDP client) and an IMAP client. I can't imagine ChromeOS being much more polished than LXLE with a few defaults - the only major difference being that Chrome had a few hiccups to get it installed, but nothing I couldn't figure out in five minutes with Google... not bad considering I don't have a whole lot of Linux experience.

  5. Arch with a lightweight DE could do this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:Oh Fuck Off by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

    I'm pretty sure that without a really nice SSD, and custom startup, you can't get boot to login in under 15 seconds on a BIO/UEFI machine.

    And to the Ask /. guy, why not just get a Chromebook, drop it into Developer mode and call it good? It will likely to be less headache than rolling your own custom linux setup the borks every update.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  7. disable swap by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 2

    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!
    1. Re:disable swap by TeknoHog · · Score: 2

      It's much better to adjust the swappiness level way down: https://rudd-o.com/linux-and-f...

      As you said, swap isn't needed so much, but there are still good reasons to have some around. Besides the usual graceful degradation argument, it can be particularly handy for portables as a suspend partition. However, Linux has lots of servery defaults, and the swappiness is one where a much lower value gives better response times for "desktop" uses.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    2. Re:disable swap by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      As you said, swap isn't needed so much, but there are still good reasons to have some around.

      There's only one: you have very little RAM. Then you may well need to use some swap to get a modern browser running well enough to hit newegg or eBay and buy some RAM.

      Besides the usual graceful degradation argument

      No. Swap causes graceless degradation. It's not so bad if you have SSD or hybrid disk, because it can handle seeking all over hell when it happens. But it's better to just let the OOM killer murder the out-of-control application. Save early, save often.

      it can be particularly handy for portables as a suspend partition.

      There's nothing wrong with a suspend file. You could make the argument that it's possible to fill up the disk to the point where there's no room for one, but that's a feature. The computer can inform me that it cannot suspend, and let me know why. I can then decide what to do about it.

      Swap was awesome back when RAM was expensive. RAM is now really cheap and you can do a hilariously huge amount of stuff with just a couple gigabytes of it and no swap. With four gigabytes of it I can run my database, map, and pbx servers in their own full-fledged VMs on top of a machine already providing other services... and still have room left over to run a Windows XP VM for automotive manuals. Now swap is just stupid, unless you know you have a specific use case where it won't unacceptably degrade performance. And frankly, if it helps you, it's probably because someone allocated a lot of memory they weren't using.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:disable swap by Rich0 · · Score: 2

      There's only one: you have very little RAM. Then you may well need to use some swap to get a modern browser running well enough to hit newegg or eBay and buy some RAM.

      No, not using swap means less memory for applications, buffers and caching of persistent storage. This means degraded performance.

      I understand the theoretical reasons for this, and tend to agree with them.

      However, in practice I've found that swap on linux tends to be pretty lousy all around. A big problem is that lots of applications do caching and such and like to expand this to the space available, often assuming they're the only thing running. I'm utterly amazed at just how much RAM chromium manages to use. I don't want it swapping out half the system to my slow swap partition when it can just re-fetch a page over my 50Mbps connection. I have my chrome disk cache on a small tmpfs for the same reason - it actually slows the browser down when it is waiting for a busy hard drive as the internet is generally much faster (my disk utilization tends to be high).

      They really need to add some system calls to linux to facilitate things like caching. An application should be able to allocate memory for use as a cache. At any time the kernel would be free to de-allocate it, and obviously the application will need to handle this case. This would allow applications to more aggressively use memory, but at the same time the OS could manage resources more effectively.

    4. Re:disable swap by AvitarX · · Score: 2

      Can a system hibernate without swap?

      I'd like to see a desktop mode for swap, that only uses it for hibernate, and when crashing is the other option.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
  8. just get a chromebook by breagerey · · Score: 2

    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

  9. ChromeOS by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 2

    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.
  10. All I want for christmas is a dumb terminal by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

    No hardware or software requirements?

    Perhaps this is more your speed:
    http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wyse-W...

  11. Stop enabling swap by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    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.'"
  12. Re:Total bullshit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Congratulations. Rarely have I seen a subject line which so succinctly describes the content that follows it.

  13. Re:Total bullshit. by SJHillman · · Score: 2

    I think it's less than Linux runs the video better and more than there's less *other stuff* trying for resources. Netflix ran fan if I made the window just a bit smaller than full screen, but at full screen, the audio and video would start to fall out of sync after about 10 minutes - haven't had that issue at all with LXLE even at fullscreen. Best as I can tell, it's because Netflix tries to rape my CPU and LXLE seems to have a little less overhead than Windows 7 did... just enough to give Chrome/Netflix the power it needs to play the video.

  14. Re:Oh Fuck Off by SJHillman · · Score: 2

    In place of.

      I had a 7200 RPM WD Scorpio Black drive in the T60 before I changed it to the SSD. The SSD is about 3 years old and is a hand-me-down from my desktop, which I just upgraded to a larger SSD.