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Comment by public_defender | Hacker News Reader

This is correct, but also a lot of these machines can native boot Linux if you enable developer mode. It's not the most frictionless experience in the world, but it can work pretty well.

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Oh sure; x86 Chromebooks that support https://mrchromebox.tech firmware upgrades are actually some of the nicest Linux laptops on the market once they've been unlocked and flashed. I just want to call out that the author is precisely backwards and Crostini is a VM and a container and not bare Linux on hardware.

Edit: There's also Crouton, for an intermediate option that does need developer mode.

laptop runs linux (chromeos) runs a linux vm via kvm (crosvm) running one or many LXD linux containers of user's choice (ubuntu, arch, debian)

You can even run docker/containerd inside the LXD container.

Now the question is has anyone tried running everything above with chromeos flex inside a vm with nested virtualization!

I used mrchromebox with a 2018 pixelbook and compiling a kernel has been a serious pain, and I'm just copying others' hard work.

Did you start with Google's "approved" kernel config and then modify it.

No, do you have a link to that? I can track back to my other sources and maybe do a better job.

I didn't know about Mr. Chromebox. Very cool. You can also press CTRL+D at boot when you have dev mode enabled to boot an OS from external storage. This is viable on ARM architectures with, for example, Arch Linux ARM.

You can, but it's loud, freezes boot for 30s or until you hit the key combo, and if you hit the wrong key it wipes your device. Developer mode is a decent escape hatch but I wouldn't want to use it in "normal" use.

Yes, this is what I meant by "not the most frictionless experience."

However in my mind it was all paid back to me 100 fold when a customs officer at an international border tried to open my laptop and examine it, but was subjected to the sonic-boom beeping of dev mode boot timeout.

What happened next? Did they say log in? Don't some countries, maybe the us say they will keep your laptop for "study" if you don't log in and let them snoop?

Sure, but it became a waste of time once they stopped allowing you to upgrade the storage - this used to be the best path to a cheap linux laptop. Not any more.

Some devices do have soldered down eMMC storage, but others have M.2 slots for NVMe storage. The later can be easily upgraded. Some of the newer AMD Chromebooks have an eMMC to NVMe bridge in M.2 form factor, so these can be upgraded as well.

Any guide and which is the better hardware to start and try, especially cheaper but reasonable performance for linux, lisp and chrome browser.

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