Ask HN: Installing Linux (Ubunutu) on Google's Pixel Chromebook

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10026839

by ecarefree • 11 years ago

6 6 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Has anyone done this? Thoughts? I'm trying to buy a good dev computer running linux that both looks good and works smoothly with linux. Thoughts on buying the Pixel?

mark_l_watson• 11 years ago

I don't have a Pixel Chromebook, but I recently bought a Toshiba Chromebook two and installed Linux without X11 http://blog.markwatson.com/2015/07/ubuntu-linux-on-my-chrome...

I like running Linux with multiple shell windows along side Chrome OS, but for me having a good emacs setup and Haskell, Clojure, and Ruby installed is fine. I also use nitrous.io for development.

ecarefree2• 11 years ago

I took a look at nitrous.io. What's your opinion on it? Have you found that it provides you all the tools you need?

ivan_burazin• 11 years ago

There are a couple of Cloud IDEs to take a look at other than Nitrous. Including Cloud 9 IDE, Koding and Codeanywhere (which I am the founder of).

If you have time to try out Codeanywhere I would love the feedback. Thanks!

leephillips2• 11 years ago

I'm typing this on a Pixel running Ubuntu 14.04. Nearly everything works perfectly, and the hardware, as you probably know, is superb. If you're going to be staring at a screen all day you should consider getting the best one you can afford. As far as I know the best screens are in the Pixel and the "retina" screens from Apple. The Pixel, however, at least the original model that I got (used), has a pretty bad image persistence problem.

I tried Crouton and found it too awkward, so deleted ChromeOS and installed Ubuntu from an SD card set up in the normal way. Things will not work right out of the box. You need to make a recovery SD card in case you accidentally drain your battery:

http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo...

Do not skip this step, as it is possible for a crash can put you in the same state - it happened to me.

Your machine will probably reboot when you try to suspend/resume. The fix varies depending on the kernel/Pixel model; I fixed this by adding

tpm_tis.force=1 tpm_tis.interrupts=0

to /boot/grub/grub.cfg (and remembering to run update-grub).

You need to add an .xmodmaprc file to your home directory to get the hardware volume, etc. keys to work. After rebooting, sometimes this doesn't "take" unless you log out of the desktop and back in a couple of times. I can suspend by running "pm-suspend" and wake up by opening the lid, but suspending by simply closing the lid doesn't work. I'm used to that, as it was the same deal with my Ubuntu Thinkpads. You can probably fix that if you care enough. While you're setting up your keymappings you can also change the "search" key to cntrl, etc.

I plan to put up a more detailed guide on my website eventually (it has an Atom feed).

The Pixel is a pleasure to use all day (but gives me only five hours of battery). Don't be put off by the small SD drive, you can use the convenient SD slot to supplement that.

ecarefree2• 11 years ago

This is incredibly helpful. I really appreciate you taking the time to write it and would definitely benefit if you wrote a full blog post about it.

I think I'm going to buy a used 2013 version as well and setup Linux on it. Thank you!

leephillips2• 11 years ago

Good luck. Some other minor issues are: keyboard backlight works only until first suspend, never comes back on after that, until you reboot; I haven't figured out how to get actual function keys working - xev reports right code, buts apps like htop don't respond correctly; plugging in headphones doesn't mute speakers or route sound to phones until you change settings using alsamixer. These all have fixes, I'm sure.

Ask HN: Installing Linux (Ubunutu) on Google's Pixel Chromebook

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