Chrome Book - Anyone dumped Chrome OS and gone with Linux or Windows?

[DaveLembke]

Friend of mine bought a used Chrome Book for $90. He doesnt really like the limitations of Chrome OS and was wondering if Linux or Windows 7 could install to it or if Google made these unable to jailbreak out of the Chrome OS?

I did a quick google search and found some info that suggests that some can upgrade and others can brick. Was wondering if anyone here has had success with dumping Chrome OS and going with Windows or Linux on a HP Chrome Book?

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-install-windows-chromebook/


He has this model and 16GB storage I think would be too tight for Windows 7, and trying to get drivers for XP or Vista to run on this would probably be a nightmare to try to find. Thinking Linux would be perfect since most distros these days are only around 4GB to 8GB or so.  http://www.amazon.com/HP-Chromebook-11-1101-White-Blue/dp/B00FJXVRM8

[camerongray]

Given that it has an ARM CPU, WIndows is totally out of the question.

Linux however tends to work really well on Chromebooks, especially Ubutnu and the process to install it is very well explained such as the guide here: https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/795730-how-to-easily-install-ubuntu-on-chromebook-with-crouton.  Doing it this way not only leaves ChromeOS totally intact, it also allows you to switch between ChomeOS and Ubuntu with a simple keyboard shortcut and therefore no rebooting!  More technically it runs Ubuntu in a chroot jail.

From what I've seen it runs really well given the spec of the machine.  The only thing to bear in mind that it is an ARM CPU so Intel only binaries won't run on it so you may find yourself needing to compile some applications from source although this is unlikely to be a big deal, especially with devices such as the Raspberry Pi making ARM binaries for Linux more common.

[DaveLembke]

WOW thanks for pointing out the very important fact that the processor is an ARM processor. I didnt even look at the CPU specs and assumed it was x64. Going to let him know that he will probably want to stick with Chrome OS then.

Thats pretty cool that you can run Linux side by side ChromeOS. Going to share this info with him and let him make the choice. I think he too didnt realize it was an ARM processor based ChromeBook when he got it used.