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Comment by panny | Hacker News Reader

I use a Chromebook. I don't use ChromeOS. I buy the loss leader hardware, install coreboot from mrchromebox.tech, then wipe the internal drive of ChromeOS and install Linux. I can get a higher spec mid-range laptop for a lower price. 8GB of RAM and an i5 is plenty for me.

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I looked into this option, but when I checked the FAQ of mrchromebox.tech it has the following:

Q: I want to buy a Chromebook to run Windows or Linux -- which should I buy?

A: Buying any modern (2017+) Chromebook with the intention of running Windows or Linux is a terrible idea, period. Most can't boot anything other than ChromeOS, and those that can run it poorly. Older models may fair better compatibility wise, but there are still lots of caveats, and it's not recommended to buy a Chromebook as a cheap Linux device. The days where Chromebooks ran Linux well ended with the 2015 models.

Also the "Supported Devices" part of the site suggests going here: https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility Which does not show anything working post 2019.

Am I missing something?

An old Thinkpad works well for me for those use cases. I replaced a Chromebook with an old x1 carbon and it works really well. Easy to upgrade and works equally well with Windows and Linux.

>Am I missing something?

He basically seems tired of angry emails from amatuers who brick their machines. Suzy qables aren't even available anymore, so to do what I'm talking about, you need to open the chromebook, disconnect the battery, and rewrite the firmware on the SOIC-8 chip from the command line. If you screw this up, you have a brick and need a CH341A SPI flash programmer to restore the firmware backup. You have one of those handy in a drawer somewhere? Then you might be the target audience. Otherwise, maybe you should reconsider doing this.

When I wanted to buy a laptop with GNU/Linux on it, I went to a OEM that actually sells GNU/Linux pre-installed.

Is the hardware really that much of a loss leader? I just poked around a bit and found plenty of 8GB i5 Windows laptops selling for exactly the same price as equivalent ChromeOS laptops. And that isn't even taking the whole second hand market into account. You can pick up a very nice used X series Thinkpad for the same price as a new Chromebook.

Same here. And because it's already designed for compatibility with the Linux kernel (because ChromeOS is Linux), it works so much better than most machines I've installed Linux on after Windows.

How often do you (and your parent poster) find yourself stuck with 'vendor kernels' on these machines a la arm devices? I've tried twice to rehabilitate Chromebooks; in the first instance I was stymied by lack of mainline support for the chipset involved, and in the second case there was no mainline support for the soldered-in broadcom wifi. Is this common, or is there a trick to avoiding buying encumbered hardware?

1) Be sure to buy things on the mrchromebox support list

2) Don't buy a chromeos device with an arm processor

3) Don't buy a chromeos device with an atom processor

4) Maybe don't buy one with an AMD processor, but I'm not sure?

How reliable is the process of wiping ChromeOS and running Linux? I used crostini for awhile, but I was worried about bricking the laptop if I dumped ChromeOS completely.

If you go the whole way and install a 3rd party firmware, it should be good.

You're unlikely to brick the laptop anyway, but if you rely on the Google firmware to boot other operating systems, it's easy to accidentally push the wrong button and wipe the drive during boot, and I recall reading about some models that did bad things if the battery fully ran down and they lost firmware battery ram storage.

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