Chromebook Running Xubuntu--Tons of Fun

Wid da wife's Valentine permission, I bought a $199 USD Acer C720 Chromebook with 16GB ssd/2GB RAM. I was already totally underwhelmed by the off-line capabilities of the ChromeOS and played with that OS for about five seconds before turning to this thread:

http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/

With his single line of script, I was able to install Xubuntu (I initially tried Ubuntu and found it laggy, especially its famed Unity desktop--as an aside, you do not need to reformat or repartition when changing Linux flavors; his script will do it for you).

With this thread for starters:

http://www.reddit.com/r/chrubuntu/comments/1rsxkd/list_of_fixes_for_xubuntu_1310_on_the_acer_c720/

you can set up a very snappy netbook with minimal additional apps.

You end up with two partitions and the automatic installation of SeaBIOS allows dual booting pretty much any Linux flavor and ChromeOS. Space is tight, however, which is another reason to install the smaller Xubuntu over bloated Ubuntu 13.10. A drawback to SeaBIOS is the inability to change its boot commands--while its developers shortened the boot menu wait to only one second, the menu still defaults to USB rather than the ssd, so you can't leave in a USB plug-in unless you choose the ssd within that one second. That's more of a hassle than you'd think, given the C720's rather poorly built USB ports that lack a smooth insertion/withdrawal of devices. The ports are flimsy, a reminder that you have spent minimal amount on this netbook.

But Xubuntu, browsing, app-starting, etc all fly on the C720. I didn't even install Wine/MS Word 97--LibreOffice is far more improved than I realized and bombs along given Acer's responsive specs. The Acer C720 battery life is indeed about 8 hours.

While the Samsung Chromebook is better built, its processor is older and its battery life not nearly as strong as the new Acers. That, and the Acer is cheaper, a plus for those who don't wish to be divorced.

At any rate, I've had a lot of fun,
Jake

Edited by Jake 2014-02-24 1:26 PM

Glad to hear you're enjoying your Chromebook running Xubuntu!

I've installed Xubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad R40e laptop a while back, it worked flawlessly even if it was an old machine.

Chromebook in Japan is yet to be released officially, although there are sellers on Amazon and auction here selling it.
It's interesting they now have 9.6% share of the computer market.

I can't believe that Japan, which always has the coolest electronics, doesn't have the Chromebook Maybe the Chromebook is too humble.

Anything that's selling with a real keyboard is always good news, but I just don't get how the ChomeOS can get away with all its offline deficiencies. People expect so little from these things. Google Docs is just awful, and Zoho Docs (which has very responsive support, btw) isn't any better. There's no real web view, no true fit-to-screen option, so there's just gobs of wasted space. There're bunch of other needs, too.

Still enjoying the first-rate Xubuntu. I've reinstalled it several times with no machine complaint. But I do take back my initial enthusiasm for LibreOffice. It has a weird, seemingly unsolvable bug whereupon saving a doc, a full half-inch gray bar pops onto the bottom of your screen. That's a marked loss of space after you find that customized menu commands can't go on the actual menubar, but have to have their toolbar. So that's about 10% of your screen that's text-unusable.

I ended up installing Wine 1.4 and my all-time favorite Windows app, MS Word 97. Custom commands go on the actual menu bar; screen available for text to the very bottom.

Oh, this time, I installed a 32-bit Xubuntu. The 64-bit version was having lots of trouble with Wine and some other apps. The Chrubuntu installation command for that specific setup would be:

curl -L -O http://goo.gl/9sgchs; sudo bash 9sgchs -m xubuntu-desktop -a i386

Going 32-bit, I do not notice a drop-off in performance, and posts in linux forums suggest better battery life with 32-bit. But I don't know for certain.

Jake

Nice! I always liked MS Word 97 on my Celeron D desktop machine because it opened up instantly. If I had something like Word 2007, it would have taken forever for it to load. I might try Wine on Fedora 19 someday to try out an application called Chasen (WinCha 2000) I use for morphological analysis.



Interesting about the 32-bit having better bettery life. Hm...

Edited by stingraze 2014-02-28 2:32 AM

If you only need Wine for a certain program, try to go with the lightest Wine that will work. 1.7, for example, is 1/2 GB larger than 1.4.

As for 32-bit making more battery life, I still don't know yet. Certainly slightly lower cpu temps. Bis pissing matches about this in linux forums, but that's the linux way; you can only live in your parents' basement for so long before the psychological toll begins.

Jake

Thanks for the tip! I'll remember that when I use Wine.