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Pawn Stars: "Chromebooks are useless bricks"

Renzatic said:
It's like what (I think) Localoid is saying. It's not exactly like BASH, considering it's more object oriented, but it is very BASH-similar. ...
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Interestingly enough, Chrome OS includes the Chrome shell, "crosh", (which offers minimal functionality) In developer mode, a full-featured Bash shell can be opened Bash shell via Vt-2 (Virtual Terminal) and is also accessible via the crosh command "shell".
 
localoid said:
Interestingly enough, Chrome OS includes the Chrome shell, "crosh", (which offers minimal functionality) In developer mode, a full-featured Bash shell can be opened Bash shell via Vt-2 (Virtual Terminal) and is also accessible via the crosh command "shell".
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This makes me think of something. If you can bring up a BASH terminal in ChromeOS, could you, in theory, use it to uninstall all the Google specific parts, and install all the necessary libraries in their place to enable to become a full-on Linux distro?

It'd be a lot of trouble and headaches, but it could be done...right?
 
Renzatic said:
This makes me think of something. If you can bring up a BASH terminal in ChromeOS, could you, in theory, use it to uninstall all the Google specific parts, and install all the necessary libraries in their place to enable to become a full-on Linux distro?

It'd be a lot of trouble and headaches, but it could be done...right?
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It doesn't seem all difficult to do (bascially, you type: "sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -t xfce" -- to run an install script)

Chromebooks run a monolithic Linux kernel, that's been patched to improve boot performance. So, by using Crouton (Chromium OS Universal Chroot Environment*), you can install a full Linux desktop alongside Chrome OS, and switch between the two (via a hotkey), with no rebooting necessary, and no need to remove the Chrome OS.

A couple of people in this thread have mention that installed ChrUbuntu, which works as a traditional dual-boot system, e.g., when you start the Chromebook you choose between Chrome OS and Ubuntu at boot time.

Crouton on the other hand uses a "chroot" environment to run both Chrome OS and Ubuntu at the same time -- you can switch between Chrome OS and your standard Linux desktop environment with a keyboard shortcut, no rebooting needed.

Installing Crouton gives the Chromebook user quick access to a standard Linux environment and all of its command-line tools and desktop applications, etc.

 
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Renzatic said:
That is nice. I've heard of Chroot before, but I've never seen it in action. Now I'm thinking about picking up a cheap Chromebook as a goof-around machine.
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I've been thinking of picking up a cheap Chromebook to replace my current "knocking around" laptop that I've been using. Its used primarily for field work, so it literally does get "knocked around" quite a bit and exposed to the element of nature and temperature extremes, etc. Over the years, I've reduced trashed a couple of laptops, so I'm not going to put a lot a money into one.

I'm in no big rush, so I'll probably wait until at least 1st quarter of '14 to see if any new Chromebooks are released. But then again, virtually any (light weight) laptop 13" or smaller than can run Linux with 6 hours or so of battery life would work for my needs. Something with an IPS display would be nice however (since it'd be used outdoors quite a bit), which is one reason why HP's latest Chromebook has peaked my interest, altho' I'm still waiting to test drive one.
 
Renzatic said:
That is nice. I've heard of Chroot before, but I've never seen it in action. Now I'm thinking about picking up a cheap Chromebook as a goof-around machine.
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Chroot in essence allows you modify your Linux install without being a "user". In my experience you must be booted from another media then manually mount whatever drive needs fixed then you can chroot into it. Super handy when the user space is broken.
 
MyMac1976 said:
Chroot in essence allows you modify your Linux install without being a "user". In my experience you must be booted from another media then manually mount whatever drive needs fixed then you can chroot into it. Super handy when the user space is broken.
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Crouton is so name because it's short for Chromium Os Ubuntu chroot environment. It's basically a script that installs a chroot Ubuntu environment on Chrome OS inside of Chrome OS’s file system, and logs you in.

Ubuntu OS ends up with its own segregated file system to run in, and applications run in a separate binary environment from the Chrome OS.
 
localoid said:
Crouton is so name because it's short for Chromium Os Ubuntu chroot environment. It's basically a script that installs a chroot Ubuntu environment on Chrome OS inside of Chrome OS’s file system, and logs you in.

Ubuntu OS ends up with its own segregated file system to run in, and applications run in a separate binary environment from the Chrome OS.
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I don't know anything about Chrome OS nor Chrome Books but I do remember that he runs Linux. That was just me trying to be helpful to a fairly recent Linux user on a tangential topic *shrug*
 
MyMac1976 said:
I don't know anything about Chrome OS nor Chrome Books but I do remember that he runs Linux. That was just me trying to be helpful to a fairly recent Linux user on a tangential topic *shrug*
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I certainly didn't mean to imply anything negative about your comments. Chroot is useful is a variety of ways. I just wanted to explain a bit about it specific to how Crouton uses it.
 
localoid said:
I certainly didn't mean to imply anything negative about your comments. Chroot is useful is a variety of ways. I just wanted to explain a bit about it specific to how Crouton uses it.
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I didn't take them in a negative way..

chroot is probably the most power place to be (that I can think of) in a Linux install. I was just expanding a bit to bring it back to something he knows. If you don't know what chroot is you are going to figure out what crouton is and why it's important. These kind of thing are why it's tough to have a conversation about Linux there is an assumption of knowledge but that's not the case anymore. I kind of do these things in Linux forums too, I try to bring things back to earth in a sense. I enjoy reading posts like yours and 90% of the members of linuxquestions because you can pick up things that wouldn't normally come out.

I've read through a couple eBooks on Linux but their audience was programmers of which I'm not I'm a user and fixer IMHO this is the biggest issue with Linux either people aim to high Gentoo/LFS or hold your hand to the point you can't fix Ubuntu/Linux Mint and there is no good reference or manual. I'm a pretty skilled Arch user but that really is the extent of my knowledge, if it's not the Arch way I get behind really fast.

I'm going to build a Gentoo box next month so I can break out of Arch mindset and maybe learn a few things. You can't stop learning.
 
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