Linux on Chromebooks
Booting Persistent USB
My preference is to boot into a 3.1 Persistent USB stick. There are plenty of cheap options out there for ultra portable USBs that you'll hardly notice due to their low-profiles. Even better, if you have a chromebook with USB C ports. The main limiter on your system will often be read/write speed, as you are funnelling all of your data through a USB device opposed to internal storage. Be careful to choose the port on your device with the best speed, you will be glad you did later on.
If you boot this way, you won't have to run or use crouton, or even boot into ChromeOS (CrOS). You'll need to enable developer mode, and press CTRL+L when rebooting the chromebook and the warning for 'OS Detection' being disabled. This is ok, and a needed result of turning on developer mode. To boot into CrOS instead, press CTRL+D. If you press nothing, a loud BEEP will happen and it will boot into CrOS.
If you have a windows machine handy, check out the links below to see how you can create a persistent USB for booting. This method does not install linux onto the USB, but rather creates a Live USB (Installation media) of your selected distribution. On this Live USB, if created following these directions, there exists a persistent filesystem, which allows you to retain settings and application data between reboots.
Normally, on a Live USB there is no persistence and all data will be lost between reboots, so be careful to follow the steps carefully when creating your USB.
Consider how much you plan to store on your system, for me 30GB storage is plenty to do all my programming and server administration from a Lubuntu installation.
My Toshiba 2 Chromebook is running on a massive 2GB of RAM, paired with a generation 6 Intel Duo ~2GhZ and 16GB internal storage. It ran me $100 in 2015 used off ebay and is still running strong. I run Lubuntu booting into a 3.1 USB, which uses i3wm and the bare minimum for packages installed / running. I have no issues in VS Code, Pycharm, LaTeX editors, and all office applications work fine. The main issue to note is web browsing. Chrome or any derivitive will consume nearly all of your RAM. Firefox does ok, and if you visit about:memory in your address bar it will allow you to 'Minimize Memory Usage' by clicking a button. Midori is my preferred browser when not dealing with personal accounts and just reading documentation.
Using Crouton
Crouton allows you to install linux alongside ChromeOS on a chromebook. Click here to grab the latest crouton installer directly, or alternatively visit Crouton's Repository and click the goo link in the description for the same.
To sync your Chromebook's local clipboard with your Linux install, grab the Crouton extension from the Chrome Web Store.
Once you have this file, be sure it is found in your Chromebook's ~/Downloads directory using the file browser and run the commands below to install Linux -
# Install the crouton binary for use within your chromebook's shell
sudo install -Dt /usr/local/bin -m 755 ~/Downloads/crouton
# Passing -e for encryption, we install all the dependencies for X11 and name(-n) it i3
sudo crouton -e -t core,keyboard,audio,cli-extra,gtk-extra,extension,x11,xorg -n i3
# Enter the chroot
sudo enter-chroot -n i3
# Install i3
sudo apt install i3
# Tell Xorg to start i3 automatically
echo "exec i3" > ~/.xinitrc
# Exit the chroot
# Add an alias for starting i3 in crouton using X
sudo echo "alias starti3='sudo enter-chroot -n i3 xinit'" >> /home/chronos/user/.bashrc
Want i3-gaps instead? See the i3-gaps GitHub for instructions, or run the commands below.
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
If you're unsure which Distro or DE to install, see the below commands for lists of supported versions.
# List supported Linux releases
sudo crouton -r list
# List supported Linux desktop environments
sudo crouton -t list
# Update chroot (you will need this eventually)
sudo crouton -u -n chrootname
Removing / editing chroots is done via the edit-chroot CLI -
# Print help text
sudo edit-chroot
# Remove chroot named i3
sudo edit-chroot -d i3
# Backup chroot
sudo edit-chroot -b chrootname
# Restore chroot from most recent tarball
sudo edit-chroot -r chrootname
# Restore from specific tarball (new machine?)
sudo edit-chroot -f mybackup.tar.gz
https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/pasiegel/i3-gaps-install-ubuntu/blob/master/i3-gaps https://launchpad.net/~simon-monette/+archive/ubuntu/i3-gaps https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53800051/repository-does-not-have-a-release-file-error