Can I convert a Chromebook to Linux system only?

_dave

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Hi,
I'm a new member today and have a general question for the forum.

With Black Friday coming up, Chromebooks are going to be less then $200 and some under $100 I sure. I have Linix Mint on my testtop system (learning stage as well) and I would like to put it also on a "cheap" laptop. My question is, is this possible or do I have to have certain hardware to look for first.

Thanks ahead for any suggestions.
 


If the Chromebook has an unlocked bootloader, probably. We don't have (m)any Chromebook users here. One of these days, I'll buy one to tinker with.

Here's a page from even Lenovo:


Scroll down a little and click on the read more. That's just mentioning Gallium, but there are other Linux distros that have ARM64 support (if that is indeed what your device will be equipped with).
 
Welcome to the forums
be very careful to fully check the specification, some Chromebooks only have 16gb drives, although this would be enough for a lightweight distribution, it will not be enough for the more popular out of the box distributions [Mint, Ubuntu, Mx . etc]
 
Hello _dave,
Welcome to the forum. Some have been able to install linux on a chrome book there was even a distro designed to do that at one time but not sure it's still active. This tutorial may also be of help.
Remember that chromebooks come locked down and normally with only 16gbs storage which is not enough to install most linux Distros. Good luck.
 
Personally I wouldn't bother using a chromebook, or any other kind of netbook for Linux. The HD's on them are usually ridiculously small.
If you're only going to use it for web-browsing and other web based applications and only few locally installed applications - it might be OK to use one.

But for heavy use (media production, development etc), or even gaming - it's better to use a semi-decent laptop, or desktop instead. I usually buy cheap, almost new, reconditioned machines when I need to get a new laptop/desktop.

That way, I can be almost certain that my new machine will be relatively well supported under Linux.
 
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