Linux on an old Chromebook

 Some time ago, for what seemed entirely sensible reasons, I bought myself an old Chromebook.

In practice, it has turned out not to be quite as useful as it might be. However, the screen’s in good condition and the keyboard is nice to type on, so I wondered, could I install Linux on it?

When I say install, I mean replace ChromeOS (which is a barebones quasi-linux under the hood) with another version of Linux entirely.

The machine is an Asus C202SA, which means it comes with an Intel Celeron N3060 processor, 16GB of eMMC storage and 4GB of RAM. Not the fastest device on the planet, but by no means the slowest.

The original Linux based EEEPc 701SD had an even slower Celeron processor, only half as much in the way of storage, and far less in the way of RAM – a measly 512MB – but I successfully installed Crunchbang Linux on it way back in 2014.

Using my previous experience with the Eee, I reckoned that it should be able to  run a current distribution of Crunchbang++ successfully.

The Crunchbang install image size is typically a little less than 6GB, and when idle it only uses around 512MB RAM so it should work. The install process has a breakpoint to avoid installing large applications such as LibreOffice, so with a bit of luck minimal install should be smaller than the typical 6GB.

A web browser, a lighter weight word processor such as AbiWord, a text editor and a lightweight spreadsheet such as Gnumeric should give me most of the functionality I’d need.

So, how to install?

Chromebooks are designed to run ChromeOS and have a number of features to prevent people installing alternative operating systems.

However, for a few years there was a project, GalliumOS, to develop an alternative to ChromeOS for Chromebooks.

The project’s now been discontinued, but the project wiki has a wealth of information about installing alternative operating systems on older ChromeBooks.

In the case of my Asus, you need to replace the startup firmware (the BIOS if you are old school), with an alternative firmware image. 

Chromebooks typically have a write protect setting on the firmware and this needs to be disabled.

Mr ChromeBook Tech supply replacement firmware for Chromebooks and have a pretty comprehensive list of models and how to disable write protection.

In the case of ‘my’ Chromebook it comes up with

meaning that you need to crack the case and remove a screw from the motherboard.

Fortunately the C202 and variants are designed for easy repair, and opening up the machine is straightforward with no nasty glue or anything like that involved, and there are a number of videos on YouTube, mostly featuring intense young men explaining exactly how to take one apart.

So, first things first.

It’s a 64-bit machine so I downloaded the latest 64bit ISO image of Crunchbang ++ (aka Cbpp), and using Rufus, made a  dd style boot volume. The latest image is only available as a torrent, meaning I needed to install µtorrent to download the image.

µtorrent is a paid for application these days, but there is still a basic free version, but you need to be resolute and ensure you select the free version, which comes with some mildly annoying ads.

Then the first slightly scary bit – cracking the case and then using a prying tool (a standard mobile phone and case separator to separate the two halves of the case. Mine came from ebay for less than five bucks.)

and then it was simply a matter of removing the write protect screw - helpfully marked with a big arrow, putting the box back together and following the instructions about getting into developer mode, and downloading the firmware update script

and executing it

Once the firmware had been flashed it was simply a matter of rebooting and running the install script.

There were a couple of  oddities during the install process - despite being the standard Debian 12 graphical installer and very standard hardware the mousepad didn't work, and more alarmingly, the first time around the disk partitioner didn't work.

In the latter case, I backed out and rebooted the machine and reran the install routine, and this time the disk, well a 16GB eMMC unit partitioned properly.

After the installation script had completed the machine rebooted and after logging in I was greeted by the standard Crunchbang updates and additional software screen

as planned I ran the software updates, but didn't install either Libre Office and other optional software to save disk space.

I then shut it down, powered it back up and checked that everything was normal and that the mousepad worked.

Everything looked good so here's a final image of the machine with AbiWord open

I'm quietly pleased with the result - I now have a fairly tough Linux laptop that, being based or hardware designed for the education market place, should stand a reasonable amount of abuse and have half decent battery life.

Installed, Crunchbang++ and the minimal application set takes up a bit less than 6GB - not quite as good as I hoped but something I can certainly live with, as it gives me roughly another 6GB free space plus something for swap.

For comparison, my two other Crunchbang++ machines which have a full software install including LibreOffice and a few extra programs such as Focuswriter and Notable come out closer to 13GB, but then they are not so constrained for disk space, both having 128GB SSD’s.

I am no technical genius, the last time I played seriously with hardware and firmware was over twenty years ago, so while I had the skills to open up the machine and remove the write protect screw, and some understanding of what was going on when I flashed the UEFI firmware, to a large extent I was simply following the bouncing ball.

Standing on the shoulders of giants I think it's called and I couldn't have done this without some very clever people making their work freely available.

While this might not be for everyone, given the right hardware, the actual installation of Linux was no more difficult than on a standard laptop, and it certainly got me out of the 'no more updates' Chromebook trap ...