I'm interested in Chromebooks for a different reason, the same reason that brings me to Pixel phones.
I hate software that tracks me, but if I wipe out Android and I install a self compiled AOSP, it's a superb user experience for me.
Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro?
Right now, Xiaomi laptops are excellent cheap machines to run Linux on (thanks to having just Intel components). Same for Huawei if you are willing to spend a bit more, but on that price a Thinkpad is probably the way to go.
> Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro?
Yes, with the caveat that full BIOS/UEFI support sometimes lags hardware releases by 6-12 months - out of the box most Chromebooks can only boot ChromeOS. Pretty much all the Chromebook firmware work to support 3rd-party OS' is done by one guy, see his page here: https://mrchromebox.tech
I run Arch on a cheap Chromebook for some tasks at work, I've generally been satisfied, and will probably buy another one eventually. I think if I was spending $500+, I'd just buy a Windows laptop and reformat it though - way more choices, and they tend to be upgradable.
It's also worth keeping in mind most Chromebooks must be disassembled to remove a firmware write-protect screw in order to flash new firmware. The one I have requires removing the battery/keyboard/etc - more than just popping off a small panel on the bottom.
Which chromebook do you have and what are its specs? I'm interested in doing the same, and I don't want to spend $800+ for a laptop I'm not going to be super happy with.
Check out GalliumOS. One of the best, Chrome specific, distros around. The question on hardware comes down to what you want. Many of the newest releases of ChromeBooks do not have removable media (M.2 form factor). So, choose wisely up front: hardware that is supported by current releases and storage and RAM suitable to your needs. The latest CB I have is a Toshiba Chromebook 2 with an i3 processor and 4GB of RAM. That model has a removable M.2 and so mine has an upgraded 128GB of storage. It has received app support for ChromeOS and also runs Gallium with full support. You can dual boot these machines easily, which is how mine is setup.
Nick Janetakis had a nice write-up on setting it up from back when the machine was newer, but to give you an idea:
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Chromebook and I would not recommend it mostly because you have to fully disassemble it to unlock the bios. I managed to do something wrong when I opened it and closed it so after a while one of the hinges just broke.
Look for a Chromebook that you can unlock by just removing the battery. Anything else is just torture.
I have the dell 7310. i3 with 8gb ram. Same as me chromebox last I heard(I think he had the i5 model but it’s not really much faster) it’s about the best experience. Flashing his full firmware is super easy
I think the highest level of widevine will not work, which is probably used for 4k and such, but regular widevine that works on linux distros will still work since it doesn't need anything special.
> Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro?
GalliumOS[1] is a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution optimized for Chromebooks with a huge list of supported devices[2].
> Right now, Xiaomi laptops are excellent cheap machines to run Linux on (thanks to having just Intel components). Same for Huawei if you are willing to spend a bit more, but on that price a Thinkpad is probably the way to go.
I find Lenovo Thinkpad E4*0 series to be the best low-cost, high build-quality Linux development machines, since they start from $569.99, allow a wide range of hardware customizations[3], and meet Mil-SPEC durability standards[4].
This is a budget ThinkPad model, design for small businesses, where 4k display would be an overkill. I actually find FHD to be a better option for a development machine, because of the lower energy consumption and extended battery life.
So I bought a cheap chromebook with an intel chip to run linux on and use as a dev machine.
The spacebar screen is a constant source of anxiety but it's even worse than that. The reason I am on chromeOS with sideloaded linux (crouton) is because when you flash custom bios (seabios) you need to authorize it, if your computer runs completely out of battery (like it did for me on a flight to Iran), then that authorization is revoked and you need to boot into chromeOS to fix it (something I couldn't do since I didn't have chromeOS) so the only thing you can do is press spacebar and wipe everything.
I think I'll never buy a chromebook again, I'll just get something from puri.sm or slimbook.es.
> Xiaomi laptops are excellent machines to run Linux on (thanks to having just Intel components)
Which ones exactly? Do you have resources?
The ones I've seen sport Nvidia GPUs [1] [2]. Which means no Wayland, and only proprietary drivers. Not "excellent" or "just Intel components" in my book.
Good bang for the buck but I want at least 8 GB DDR4 in a new laptop (bought in 2018), and preferably also TB3 and an AMD GPU.
Regardless of the other unnecessary or lacking features Macbook laptops have (butterfly keyboard, touchbar, magsafe, USB-A ports come to mind) if you want a decent amount of RAM and an AMD GPU you pay the jackpot price on MBPs.
DDR3. Does have 2.4 GHz + 5 GHz WLAN which is another minimum requirement. Anyway, though I haven't used it this seems like a nice machine with good bang for the buck. Except when it comes to warranty.
i5 has 8 GB of RAM and still an Intel HD card. Sadly, it's not fanless. Same as with MS Surface and virtually all fanless m3 setups, there's no 8 GB option.
It depends. For me this is about being future proof.
Its more secure than X, but you can compartmentalise as well via VMs (Qubes does this) or Docker (Jessie Frazelle runs everything in Docker).
Enlightenment [1] supports Wayland since E20.
If you use i3 right now, you can use Sway [2] as drop-in replacement. That's my plan (since I use i3) if I might some time.
SailfishOS [3] also already uses Wayland. Tizen apparently does as well. SailfishOS doesn't use profiling or ads, and has an Android compatibility layer.
KDE and Gnome might as well (according to [4] they do); I don't use those.
If it provides more security (I guess applications cannot draw over other applications, nor grab keyboard input unless they're in focus), then how can I have a wm? How can I have a screensaver?
Is there any reason to use it if most of my applications are running in xwayland?
Less code runs as root than with X, since the server is far more lean.
There should be zero tearing or artifacts in Wayland, and the latency should be lower as well. Both due to passive compositing.
Screensavers are a pointless waste of energy. I'm not sure why you mention them.
In Wayland, WM/DE use IPC to communicate with each other; not X.
In theory you can run multiple XWayland servers to separate from each other. If security is a concern, Qubes might also be an option. And you're still more secure and better performance with Wayland plus some XWayland than with X.
I still don't see how it is more secure. If the WM can use IPC and tell wayland 'hey, I want to send this keystroke' or 'what were the keyboard inputs?' then why can't some malicious application do the same?
Can I run multiple wayland servers separate from each other? If not, then I still don't see how wm can prevent a random application from pretending to be a wm but actually being a keylogger.
The Wayland compositor does that kind of task, not the DE/WM like with X. That's why porting to Wayland isn't trivial. The server has many less lines of code leading to a lower attack surface, and lower latency or less tearing, and better HiDPI functionality.
Wayland (with Gnome) is fine as a daily driver on Arch (I've been using it for months, since AMD drivers were mainlined). I guess Ubuntu's packages are just too old.
> Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro?
They aren't ideal. But they do have a good alternative that is in its late beta stages. Typically you could run a Linux distro in a chroot on the chromebook, after putting it into developer mode. Unfortunately the chroot does have limits - fox example it doesn't get another IP address so you can't coexist much with ChromeOS - such as using avahi.
The new approach (named Crostini) instead uses a lightweight kvm based virtual machine mechanism to run a Linux guest isolated from the host. They also (by default) use the hardened ChromeOS kernel inside the guest. Note that not all chromebooks are currently supported but a new x86 chromebook should be fine.
Maybe you know the answer to this question I have always wanted:
I want to be able to run multiple OSs/Installations-of-the-same-OS on a single machine such that I can swap between "running" OSs - meaning, I want to have one OS sleep while I use the other.
So, if I have windows and ubuntu on the same machine - I dont want to reboot, I want to just put one to sleep and wake the other one up...
OR Ideally - I want to be able to run them side-by-side in some manner that is greater than a VM running on top of the other... My System76 laptop has dual SSD drives in it, I'd like to have both machines running, with half the resources dedicated to each, and have my KVM switch between them.
The specific functionality you describe is available in mainframes, although they are designed to always run a hypervisor. You can't practically do it in the PC world because the operating systems either expect to use a virtualisation interface, or they expect direct control over the hardware. The latter will also give better performance.
Some virtualisation environments do have hardware passthrough. A good example would be having a high performance PCIE video card which is passed through to to a guest for gaming. You can also use real storage instead of files pretending to be storage, although this is less flexible (eg no snapshots).
My recommendation is to use Ubuntu as your host OS and run Windows as a VM guest.
The Xiaomi Air 12 is really good quality for ~$550 if you go for the m3 CPU. It's fanless (but only 4 GB of RAM), which is something I love.
It's a different price point than Lenovo. Much cheaper. They are good ultrabooks.
Regardless of the CPU you choose (e.g. i5 has 8 GB, but it's not fanless), all 12 inch models have Intel components only, including the wireless card. It's one of the few laptops that truly runs well on Linux out of the box with zero glitches.
Only a few classic Thinkpads are better, with even good ACPI support for battery discharge events. But that's really rare, and does not make much difference if you run a HAL like UPower to abstract your ACPI-battery.
There's a few ThinkPads where you can remove the BIOS and replace it with Coreboot, and remove Intel ME as well. For example the ThinkPad T60 and X200, available on second hand market. Replace the keyboard if you find it dirty to use those 2nd hand. The advantage these have is the hardware is serviceable by the user.
Thanks. I find $550 a bit expensive. Linux Mint runs flawlessly on a Lenovo S120 (11.6"/4GB RAM/32GB SSD) but I can't upgrade the SSD and that's a bummer. Can't complain, though, it was $170 new from Amazon...
Asus Zenbook UX305 also support Linux 100% out of the box. It’s essentially a MacBook clone with 13” 1080p screen, m3, 8 gb ram, and 256 ssd. I currently use one with Mint Linux and is happy with it.
Why not? I'm running vanilla AOSP with F-Droid apps only. No Google Apps framework.
Threats are limited then to regular baseband radio issues. I know I could be doing better if we had open hardware, but that's the most practical solution I can implement today I think.
Have you considered writing a guide on how you do this and what changes you make? I also own a Pixel, but kept running into problems when I tried to compile Android, eventually making me give up.
I hate software that tracks me, but if I wipe out Android and I install a self compiled AOSP, it's a superb user experience for me.
Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro?
Right now, Xiaomi laptops are excellent cheap machines to run Linux on (thanks to having just Intel components). Same for Huawei if you are willing to spend a bit more, but on that price a Thinkpad is probably the way to go.