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How to run an Ubuntu desktop on ChromeOS

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All of these procedures work on an ASUS C200 Chromebook. Some steps may not work for all devices.

Developer Mode

from https://www.chromium.org/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/generic

  • Invoke Recovery Mode with ESC + REFRESH and tap POWER

  • Enter Developer Mode from the Recovery screen by pressing CTRL-D

  • Confirm Developer Mode and the chromebook will start into Developer Mode.

The initial conversion Developer Mode might take a bit. Now each time you reboot the chromebook, you will need to press CTRL-D to enter Developer Mode.

Install Crouton

from https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

  • Install the Chrome browser extension from https://goo.gl/OVQOEt.

  • Download the latest version of crouton from https://goo.gl/fd3zc.

  • Open a crosh shell with CTRL + ALT + T

  • Enter shell

  • sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -t xiwi,xfce

    • Answer the prompts and wait for the install to complete

  • Start your full Linux desktop with sudo startxfce4

Mount a SMB Share into Linux (NOT CURRENTLY WORKING)

Chrome has an extension that finally makes it easy to mount SMB shares in ChromeOS. The problem comes when trying to share this mount into the Linux desktop.

from https://github.com/divx118/cifs/blob/master/README.md

The kernel flag setting must be redone after each ChromeOS update.

  • cd /usr/local

  • sudo wget "https://raw.github.com/divx118/cifs/master/mountcifs.tar.gz"

  • sudo tar xvf mountcifs.tar.gz

  • Edit the fstab, sudo vi ./etc/fstab

    • Mine looks like:

//192.168.123.135/Public        /media/removable/public smbfs   username=myuser,password=mypass,rw,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

Using the Mount

  • Start with sudo mountcifs start

  • Start you linux desktop

  • Stop with sudo mountcifs stop

References