Use your Chromebook with Linux
Unleashed
© Lead Image © Victoria Moody, 123RF.com
Chromebooks are firmly locked in the Google jail, but with the right know-how, you can break out of vendor lock-in and operate the devices with free software.
Chromebooks have established themselves as a low-cost alternative to conventional entry-level laptops. Devices from many manufacturers and with many display sizes are available; however, all models are tightly tied to the Chrome OS operating system by Google.
Some potential buyers, toying with the idea of investing in such a device, are discouraged by the very limited capabilities of the operating system despite what is now quite powerful hardware. And, serious privacy concerns are another drawback to the system. Google is one of the largest collectors of data worldwide and makes things easy for itself by closely tying Chrome OS to its online services to extract personal data from users and thus generate profiles.
As a US corporate group, Google is forced to hand over the data to US authorities when ordered to do so. But the close bond between the operating system, Google's services, and the hardware is not hard-wired, so resourceful minds from the free developer community have broken these restraints and customized Linux for Chromebooks. The easiest approach is to create a dual-boot system using the ChrX tools [1]. Alternatively, you can use a separate Linux derivative in a window on Chrome OS in the form of Crouton [2].
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