With the death of Unity for Ubuntu, I decided I was going to use a Chromebook for my computing tasks. This is a guide to a lightweight, no frills, Ubuntu Openbox setup using Crouton scripts. I've been a solid Linux user for 10+ years. I made the switch from FreeBSD to Arch Linux in 2004 and never looked back. Fast forward to 2012, I was writing Go code that runs on Ubuntu servers so adopting Canonicals desktop offering made sense for compatibility. I grew to love Unity, hated to see it go. Moving on, hello Chromebook.
A window manager like Openbox should run well even on an ARM powered Chromebook. On with the show, first you need to put your Chromebook in developer mode.
Some notes, startx won't work and enabling anybody to start the X server will have no affect. It's a chroot can't `sudo dpkg-reconfigure x11-common`.
Start your desktop environment this way.
My Chromebook Setup
I do all of my work inside a GNU Screen session, so with Chrome already running on the Chromebook, I don't really need X. I do have hobbies though, like Gimp, Inkscape so X is a must anyway. I choose Openbox due to its lightweight requirements, no frills.
A window manager like Openbox should run well even on an ARM powered Chromebook. On with the show, first you need to put your Chromebook in developer mode.
Chromebook Developer Mode
Doing this will delete the files on your Chromebook. Backup anything you care about.
- Press and hold the ESC+Refresh keys, remain holding and press the Power key. Your Chromebook will reboot.
- At the recovery screen, hit CTRL+D. Don't worry about the broken installation message, its harmless.
- Hit the enter key to turn off OS verification. This will enter the developer mode setup.
- Once the developer mode setup completes, you will be prompted by the Chrome Welcome! screen. The lower left corner of the welcome screen says enable debugging features, click it. You will be able to set your root password etc.
You're now in developer mode, your Chromebook will always notify you that OS verification is off when you reboot, just wait for screen to time out or hit CTRL+D to fully boot when you see it.
Crouton, Ubuntu Installation
- Download Crouton
- Open the Crosh Terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T. This is where I prefer to add to shelf and open in single window. Chrome options > More tools > Add to Shelf...
- In the Crosh Terminal, type `shell` at the prompt, you will be greeted with chronos@localhost / $ the developer mode shell prompt.
You're now ready to install Ubuntu min (cli-extra) via Crouton. The flag -e is to encrypt & -n name of your chroot. At the prompt enter the following.
sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -n mychroot -t cli-extra, xorgsudo startcli -X xorgOpenbox Installation
This is pretty straight forward.
sudo apt install openbox, obconfecho "sudo -u $USER openbox-session" >> .xinitrcStart your desktop environment this way.
sudo xinitOther
I didn't opt for the Crouton keyboard script at install. If you want / care if the function keys work, vol up / down while in your chroot, see here.
256 color terminal.
echo "export TERM=xterm-256color" >> .bashrc
External drives are mounted NOEXEC you can remount EXEC.
sudo mount -o remount,exec /media/removable/DEVICE_NAME
GNU Screen has race condition issue, error : Cannot make directory '/var/run/screen': Permission denied
sudo /etc/init.d/screen-cleanup start
Comments
Post a Comment