Gallium OS: a fast and lightweight Linux distro for ChromeOS devices | Hacker News Reader

Gallium OS: a fast and lightweight Linux distro for ChromeOS devices

galliumos.org

136 pointsmikece68 comments

The “news” section shows the last release was in 2019. Not that it matters really. I never used gallium, because other distros just worked. Flash the bios with mr chromebox firmware and install whatever. I’ve been using Ubuntu 14 now 18 on an old acer for 9 years now, no issues other than its very very low powered by today’s standards.

Edit to add the one thing I did have to was install gallium keybindings which support the funky chrome book function keys.

Mr.Chromebox is the MVP when it comes to running alt OS on Chromebooks, His Coreboot/Seabios[1] is the UEFI ROM which enables it. He also actively answers queries in the r/chultrabook & r/GalliumOS subreddits.

Gallium OS is needed because of some weird quirks with certain Chromebooks e.g. BayTrail chipsets require special drivers for Touchpad, microphone etc. from ChromeOS and only Gallium OS include them.

If you can get hold of a 11" Chromebook, Then installing Linux on it using Coreboot is the least expensive way to get a portable Linux computer with keyboard as Chromebooks are often subsidized.

Just ensure that the device is supported by Coreboot beforehand.

[1] https://mrchromebox.tech/

Intel BayTrail chipsets are well supported by some distros such as Fedora nowadays. Does the ChromeOS hardware come with additional quirks?

> Intel BayTrail chipsets are well supported by some distros such as Fedora nowadays

Sorry, I meant Braswell. At one point, Installing other OS on Braswell damaged its speakers[1] which are now resolved with latest Mr.Chromebox's firmware + OS level fixes. There are still issues with Microphone even with GalliumOS.

Also ChromeOS has Chrome Multi Touch (CMT) touchpad driver which is much better than default driver and are included in Gallium OS, But since GalliumOS is not developed further it's better to go for other OS.

> Does the ChromeOS hardware come with additional quirks?

I understand that you question was related to Intel BayTrail, But I'm using it to mention that there are certain hardware deviations w.r.t Chromebooks like inclusion Google Security Chip (GSC)[2].

[1] https://wiki.galliumos.org/Support/Braswell

[2] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec/+/c...

Is Braswell hardware reasonably common outside Chromebooks? AIUI, Cherry Trail (e.g. MS Surface 3) was released alongside Braswell and is now well supported in some mainline distros at least.

I imagine some of the use-case scenarios have dwindled because recent Chromebooks have come with the innate ability to run Android or Linux apps.

So the die-hard users that want to turn their Chromebook into a GNU+Linux laptop still look at Gallium. But the ones that just wanted to run a few Android/Linux-specific tools without needing to blow the entire OS away have found easier options.

> The “news” section shows the last release was in 2019.

I noticed this too... is this project dead?

> Flash the bios with mr chromebox firmware...

I had not heard of this path before; is it a one-way trip to load linux on a Chrome OS device this way or can it be reverted to factory settings (when it's time to pawn the device off on someone else)?

I've never actually done this, but the process of flashing the firmware prompts you to back up the original firmware and I'm pretty sure you can just put it back on

My experience with this, and I'll stress that I'm sure it varies by device, is that using the Mr. Chromebox firmware to install GalliumOS works great, until you allow the device to be put to sleep or run out of battery. Then the firmware is restored to the original, without any user request.

This blocks you from booting your Linux environment again but is otherwise non-destructive (you can just run Mr. Chromebox again to get the necessary firmware re-installed)

(My device is a HP Chromebook 14")

Did you do the full firmware replacement or just the legacy boot slot? I have one of the early Acer Chromebooks and saw warnings about similar behavior if you did just the legacy slot, but if you open the case and remove the write protect screw and flash a full firmware, you wouldn't have any change when you run out of battery.

I was under the impression that is not an option on the Chromebook 14" from HP. But I have never disassembled the thing, so if there is a write-protect screw in there, I won't have seen it anyway...

I don't really mind, it doesn't harm the secondary partition at all, (it's more annoying that it cannot restore from sleep, than what happens if I forget to honor the fact that it cannot go to sleep properly...)

I could configure it so that it just won't go to sleep, but I'd rather have to run a script and restore the functioning firmware, than wake up to a chromebook with completely drained battery (and whatever filesystem corruption might come after ceasing writes to the filesystem in the middle of whatever happens due to an abrupt loss of power and when it's not "going to sleep" at the time.)

Ok I looked around, and there's several models of 'HP Chromebook 14', the earliest model has a screw, but the rest of them have a security device CR50 which you can unlock with a special debugging cable and a procedure which might be more trouble than it's worth ;)

I think it's kind of neat the way that it fails. It would be very easy for someone to accidentally poof and it's been factory reset if they didn't know how to handle this. I'm talking four mis-keystrokes easy. And a puzzle to solve in case it has fallen into the wrong hands? Sign me up, I guess!

I miss updates from GalliumOS, I guess it's time to move on, but I don't know if I could ever get all of the nice comfort features they built into their distro to be fully replicated on any other modern Linux distro of any kind that isn't specially focused on being a Linux distro for Chromebooks, like Gallium was!

I think they recommend just using normal Ubuntu now that most of the drivers have been upstreamed.

Looks like their repo has gone a bit quiet as well.

https://github.com/GalliumOS

If you're into this and want a cheap and stable system you could look into buying the Asus chromeboxes that Google sells for their 'meet' hardware, they're pretty neat, can be upgraded to 16G and there are some that have an i7 in them, you can typically get them at surplus prices because the sellers usually don't know what to do with them. The internal 32G SSD can be upgraded as well to a larger format one.

Note that the write protect switch is on a different location on the motherboard than indicated in most docs, it is a screw with a bunch of solderpads on it, look for a large diameter very flat screwhead, that's the one. Just unscrew it and leave it out.

Is this the i7 (10th gen) Chromebox you had in mind? Is currently going for $876 on Amazon. I guess surplus is the reasonable way to get them. Where is a good place to look? EBay?

ASUS Chromebox4 with Intel Core i7-10510U, 16GB RAM, M.2 PCIE 256GB SSD Storage, Power/DisplayPort Over Type C, Dual HDMI, Gigabit LAN, WiFi 6, MicroSD Card Reader, VESA Mount, Chrome OS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TGT71MG/

Chromebox 3, i7

Yes, new they are very expensive, surplus $100 to $200. EBay, Marktplaats, large equipment recyclers.

edit: this one:

https://www.asus.com/Displays-Desktops/Mini-PCs/Chrome-OS-de...

Do you think this could run Kodi? Looks like quite a capable machine and if you can get it for ~100$ maybe it could really be a better experience then using Raspberry.

Thanks for bringing my attention to this!

Easily. The 8th gen CPUs are a nice sweet spot. Powerful enough graphics and cpu, energy efficient enough, 4 cores, while not new enough to be expensive.

Excellent, because while using Raspberry Pi is really cool just because his small it is. It very easily crashes especially if you're too fast. And because I've got an older model I had to restrict the resolution to 720p.

For those wondering why run Kodi on a TV. Simple the TV is to old to be in any way smart, but still works perfectly, so there no reason to replace it. Also it feels really good bragging to my brother what I can do in my dumb TV, that not even he can do on his smart TV. :P

Yes, absolutely.

Too late to edit, I've found an image of the motherboard, the big screw lower left is the one to remove to be able to reflash the bios:

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1KAuWaOzxK1RjSspjq6AS.pXa1/Nie...

I picked up a Lenovo Thinkpad x131e Chromebook for $45 on eBay. A few rough spots, but fully functional. I managed to upgrade the RAM (max 8GB), the mSATA (64GB ~$18), and even add a 2.5" drive.

It's replacing my Samsung N120 netbook as a daily user.

How do they perform? I run an older Mac Mini to do all my network routing, IP Camera recording, PVR, etc. I would expect they've got some decent graphics prowess seeing as how their sole job in life to capture and display video conferencing…

I used an older Chromebox as my desktop. If you get the decent ones, it's an Intel laptop cpu with decent (but not heroic) cooling and performs as you would expect from that. I don't think you get any controls for ram timings or voltage control, and generally the storage slots are very short, so you have limited options. It's great as a low cost, no bs, small form factor platform, but if you want performance and can go bigger, desktop chips will run laps around it.

For network routing, I don't think I've seen a chromebox with two nics, so you need to be OK with USB networking or single nic routing (which can still be useful depending on the details).

Video conferencing isn't that hard these days, the iGPU handles video encode/decode and you're done.

The Asus Chromebox will host an M.2 SSD.

You can easily get those in 2TB if you want.

My Asus Chromebox only does 2242, which I haven't seen in large capacity from reputable vendors. Maybe they increased the length for future Chromeboxes though.

You probably have the previous generation, the one I got is a chromebox 3, link to picture of MB provided above, you can check the SSD spot, the stand-off for the mount can be moved to an alternate position for a longer SSD on that one.

Be very careful when moving that stand off so you don't damage the circuitry.

Aha, I see that now, that's probably 2280? Which seems to be the most common/mainstream size. That's a nice update!

Indeed, and not that much money either. But even if the longer screw position isn't there it usually is there electrically and you might be able to run a bigger unit anyway by removing the stand-off and using some double sided tape+a tie wrap. Not the most elegant solution but hey, this is hacking :)

I'm using one to run Ubuntu Studio and it works flawlessly, but since the box doesn't have internal audio I added a USB based audio card. The display hooked up to that box is a 32" Dell QHD monitor.

Those are neat. I haven’t seen them before.

They remind me of Sun’s Cobalt Qubes from a few years ago.

Super interesting - are there multiple generations of these?

Yes, there are a couple of different versions, with a variety of CPUs.

So basically just get the ones that have a higher end i7 or i5 it sounds like, upgrade RAM if necessary + SSD ( I am guessing its mSata or NVME) and then turn that little screw for write protection?

This has to be the best kept secret in PC's lol

Yes, that's exactly it.

> This has to be the best kept secret in PC's lol

Not any more.

I put a link to a picture of the mb upthread so you know which screw to remove.

Anyone interested should check out Breath. An active project with a similar goal. I've run it on multiple Chromebooks and love the experience.

https://cb-linux.github.io/breath/

This might be a good place to ask - I have a first generation Samsung Chromebook (exynos arm based) which is no longer supported by Google.

Gallium doesn’t support it; is anyone else using this device? Which OS are you using? And did you open it to reflash the bios, or you just ctrl-d each boot and hope not to accidentally press space?

try to ask author of firmwares i have used to x86 chromebook for me:

https://github.com/MrChromebox/scripts/blob/master/cbmodels....

I am also interested on this thin Samsung for me but I lended it to a neighbour child. Can not do an experiment.

Gallium OS is great, I even donated because it's provided so much value. Been running it for years on my old Acer Chromebook after Google EoL'd it.

dead: no activity since mid-2017: https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-distro/graphs/code-fr...

That repository was updated: a0abbfc on Jan 4, 2020

And it's not the code. "Docs, issues, and artwork sources for GalliumOS"

so there's not a clear "why" on this page, just a "download" digging for it yields the wiki which says:

"Why Linux? More applications Linux can run many different types of applicatons. No matter what you're trying to do, an application exists for Linux. ChromeOS is very limited. Sure, NaCl (Native Client) brings the ability to run native code to ChromeOS, but that's a hack at best, and there's still no good software to take advantage of it. With Linux you can install any Linux compatible software, totally natively. Firefox, Transmission (BitTorrent), LibreOffice, Steam, VLC Media Player, Kodi Media Center, the GIMP, VirtualBox, and many more are available on Linux to do things that simply aren't possible on ChromeOS. "

which... isn't true? chromeos can run at least most of those just fine, and has been able to for a while? https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en

The "why" here ... or at least the reason for me to flash my Chromebook BIOS and install Gallium ... was because my Chromebook went EoL by Google and I wanted to see if I can keep it going for a while.

Gallium is an amazing piece of work, and the documentation is superb, but it's starting to show that it's on a very out of date base and there's no sign of a new version for some time. The efforts seem to have slowed down, which is a shame.

It leaves me wondering if the main patches and drivers in the kernel fork could ever be merged upstream. Maybe there's some technical or legal reason why not, or maybe it's just the work required and nobody has the time.

Either way, I hope it remains possible to run old Chromebooks for a while yet! They are often decent, cheap hardware if a little slow.

Yes , there are a lot of quirks in the chrome book platform . I have a 2015 hp 11e and nothing works on it but chromeos, win7 and gallium. No Ubuntu , FreeBSD , NetBSD or red hat .

I installed Gallium several years back, on a chromebook that didn't support any of that (at the time, at least). Gallium was also the only distro I found that worked out of the box with full hardware support (audio, webcam, etc).

Other commenters say that those drivers are now in other distros too, so Gallium may no longer have its original USPs...

Running other OSs on my chromebook is a bit of a pain, because every time you boot, you get a BIOS screen warning you about non-google software (and offering to wipe everything!). Also, (and maybe unique to my chromebook model), it has a nasty gotcha: if you ever let the battery drain empty, then the firmware loses its settings and it will no longer boot at all :( That one was fun to diagnose and fix...

Same reason people install Linux on their computers instead of just using WSL on Windows. It's faster, it's more natural, and the whole OS receives updates forever.

Then why is a Gallium that's out-of-date be an issue? If you have an older Chrombook, from the time when Gallium was maintained, and if Linux indeed "updates forever," go with Gallium.

Just the fact that it mentions NaCl means it must have been written in the 2013-2014 era.

Is XFCE really any faster or lighter than the Chromium OS desktop environment (IIUC, basically Chromium without an intervening display server like Xorg or a Wayland compositor)? My guess is that, since one basically has to run a web browser anyway, it's probably not.

Yes, because ChromeOS and Crostini, both run on top of virtualized environments, so already there you are using more resources than on a regular Linux distribution.

I might be bringing my own biases but I don't think speed is the primary feature of this. Rather, not being connected to Google's data collection/surveillance capitalism system is the feature.

I would think running stuff other than just a web browser is the use case. The device goes from portable web browser to Linux laptop with every tool a professional developer uses at your finger tips (and a web browser)

I've run vscode, docker and node in crostini (the debian-in-a-VM that you can just enable in settings in normal Chrome OS). Worked great for me.

I'm not at all claiming Chrome OS or crostini are without problems or limitations, but I have been very happily surprised at how well it stood up to some basic web dev work.

I suspect that this distinction will be irrelevant to the next generation, as services like GitHub Code Spaces, which provide a full development environment inside a web browser, become more normal.

Can you run node in the web browser and debug through there?

I’m not the brightest crayon in the box, I spend most of my life in the debugger!

Yes, there's at least one option for that now!

https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/

For that, one would only need a Chromium OS build without Google API keys. But then, replacing Google account login with something else could take some work.

yeah, I switched my ThinkPad 131e to GalliumOs and found how to login to google account with Chromium browser. Any lags after update, Good job!

https://pirogove.blogspot.com/2021/08/gallium-is-remedy-for-...

As a bonus github.dev team already fixed js error and editor works with Chronium browser already.

Gallium is great! I learned to code on a Chromebook. Originally I ran Linux in a tab using Chrouton, then I switched to gallium when I became aware of it. It just worked for me, and I still have that device for my kids to bang on.

I've used Gallium on an old Toshiba chromebook for years. I don't use the system full time, but there are no driver issues or anything with Gallium. Its pretty impressive and gave new life to an otherwise crappy laptop.

per hardware compat page https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility , most recent fully supported device is 2018 device from a company called positivo, supported devices from mainstream manufacturers are 2017 and earlier

I wish there were a foundation that worked on linux support for more recently released devices (laptops + chromebooks), I would fund this

fwupd / ubuntu certifications seem close, but they also seem more about supporting specific devices within a machine, and less about supporting the whole machine

Browser, text editor, terminal. Seems to me old ChromeOS can do that.

It was too "lightweight". Some of the core functions of Linux were missing and there was no method to add them back to the kernel.

Doesn't work on AMD.

Why a dedicated distro, can't you use any distro on a chromebook?

it should be firmware for a distro to install on chromebook. macbooks i thinks also have firmware, not a bios.

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