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Excellent $199 CA thanks for sharing | 162 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections Thread
Authored by: artp on Sunday, July 07 2013 @ 11:02 PM EDT
"Eror" -> "Error" in Title Block if possible, please.

---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes Goes Here
Authored by: artp on Sunday, July 07 2013 @ 11:04 PM EDT
For those intrepid souls who are still transcribing documents
from the "Comes v/ MS" lawsuit.

See link above for "Comes v. MS" for details. Post
transcripts as ASCII with HTML markup included.

---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic Thread
Authored by: artp on Sunday, July 07 2013 @ 11:09 PM EDT
Hhmmm...

No Chromebook, No Linux, no Microsoft, no Acer, BestBuy or
Samsung, no Google, no Secure Boot, no security (follows from
Microsoft...) ...

Everything else is fair game!

---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

News Picks Thread
Authored by: artp on Sunday, July 07 2013 @ 11:10 PM EDT
With URLs, please!

---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 01:00 AM EDT
You might want to take a look at the Raspberry Pi to experiment with.

--W. H. Heydt

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 01:12 AM EDT
"sudo startkde"

Would that mean you are running the entire KDE desktop as
root? If so, very bad idea.

If not, carry on and well done!

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Nivag on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 01:25 AM EDT
You might like to try the Mate Desktop Environment - it is like GNOME 2, but it
has the useful bits added back in that GNOME 2 dropped. http://mate-desktop.org

When GNOME 3 came out, I found it was a 'Triumph of Fashion over Functionality',
so I fled to xfce. Now I use Mate.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Small correction
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 03:26 AM EDT
Chromebook is NOT Android laptop. it's streamlined and
simplified regular Linux distribution - with X Window System
and everything. that's why it was so easy to run KDE under
it.

Android laptops do exist but they are totally different
beasts and it's not easy to run KDE on them.

Note that ChromeOS slowly but surely removes traditional
Linux components which means that at some point it may
become impossible to run "traditional" Linux in chroot. Not
any time soon, though.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Small correction - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 03:49 AM EDT
  • Small correction - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 06:23 AM EDT
  • Small correction - Authored by: PJ on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 05:46 PM EDT
    • I have both - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 10:29 PM EDT
My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 06:56 AM EDT
>Plus I worried some donkey would accuse me of pushing
Samsung products, since we've been covering the Apple v.
Samsung patents wars.

Just playing devil's advocate ....

It could be inferred that - by deliberately not choosing a
Samsung - you are actually endorsing apple; I understand
asses (I know you said donkeys, but I think you're being too
polite) with these sort of inferential powers have made
appearances earlier.

[ Reply to This | # ]

So pleased that it worked for you :-)
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 07:30 AM EDT
The Pixel looks beautiful but I can't justify that kind of
expense ATM :-)

Here's hoping that other OEM take the ball and run with it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Chromebook - KDE Tutorial
Authored by: the_flatlander on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 07:46 AM EDT
Am I allowed to marvel... I know, I know, Ms. Jones, you've *always* been
clueful... but you've come a long way over the past decade... now you're writing
tutorials on using new hardware with our familiar open source tools? Oh. My.

Too much fun.

This is probably the very best part of the Open Source Movement; it's strength
and it's appeal: It can empower anyone and everyone.

The Flatlander

Does anyone know? Are there drivers available to put SCO UNIX, (whatever they
call it these days), on a Chromebook? [smirk]

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: JamesK on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 07:57 AM EDT
{
and with the Samsung, it only had wireless
}

I had the same problem with my Nokia N800. I got around that with a an Asus
WL-330gE portable access point. I could connect it to an Ethernet port and then
use WiFi. I now have a D-Link DAP-1350, which does 802.11n and use it with my
tablet.

---
The following program contains immature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Excellent $199 CA thanks for sharing
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 08:01 AM EDT
Congratulations, the pad problem is not an XFCE issue is a
driver / config problem, probably you can find how to fix
it, but if you are happy with KDE stay with it.

In theory the specs must be
Intel Celeron Dual-Core 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM and 320 GB HDD 11.6"
LCD LED backlight 1366 x 768, (HD)GPU Intel HD2000

It is a bargain for 200 USD, and with any Linux runs as
hell.

Chrome OS is Linux but it does not use X-Windows, crouton
does, and installs it. I think in a near future it will use
Mir. And from Crouton you can even use Steam.

It is a shame that there is no AMD version as their GPUs are
much faster than Intel ones, at the same price - CPU+GPU -.

But it is the best choice anyone can meke for their money -
that is why they are selling more over the net - 199 USD at
google play store - than at shops that would earn much money
if they can sell you a expensive an worst MS or OSX
preinstalled machine.

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 08:23 AM EDT
I've been running Ubuntu (<a href="http://chromeos-
cr48.blogspot.com/2013/05/chrubuntu-one-script-to-rule-them-
all_31.html">actually chrubuntu</a>) for perhaps 6 months on
my Acer C7 Chromebook. It works great, though is obviously
a little different from what pj did.

At least with chrubuntu, there's a little problem with
installing via chroot'ing, in that it means the system
libraries being used aren't always consistent with the
libraries needed by programs you get from the Ubuntu
repositories. In other words, if you install a new program
from the repository, even though it automatically installs
all the libraries needed, the program may still not work
because the actual libraries being used are the ones that
came with chrubuntu and not the new ones that have been
downloaded. Or at least, that's my understanding of why the
problem occurs.

But that's the only problem I encountered. All things
considered, the C7 works great as a $199
Ubuntu laptop.

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 10:30 AM EDT
I also recently went to a local Best Buy and found both
chromebooks on display on an endcap as you enter the
computer section. Samsung now has an entire section of Best
Buy. I went for the Samsung model because it was newer.
$10 for a usb/ethernet adapter. It also has a sd card
reader and usb ports. I put Fedora 18 on an 8g sd card and
booted to that. Very simple to do, along the same lines you
detailed. Unfortunately it was recently stolen. I replaced
it with an Acer Aspire M5. It runs Windows 8 on UEFI. You
can also run Legacy Bios and install Linux. I chose to use
the UEFI and installed OpenSuse 12.3 on it and the UEFI
allow me to go in and authorize it's bootup in UEFI. Pretty
simple to do once I did some reading and understood a little
bit about UEFI. This was my first encounter with it.

john

[ Reply to This | # ]

Other options are more expensive but
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 11:16 AM EDT
I haven't seen people putting on the distro's I want to use,
so that knocked out Chromebooks as an option for me. I do
have a (few) Raspberry Pi's and can get one of those droid
phone laptop bodies. My other two thoughts are either one
of the preinstalled sellers (Zareason or System 76), or
buying one of the "build it yourself" laptop companies that
let you order a plan laptop (like Sager).
If they get a way to get any Linux distro on there, then the
2nd generation Acer, with twice the memory and a 320gb hard
drive, is what I would be buying in a minute (about $50 more
then the low end model, and I can hook it to an external
monitor when I want better resolution and am not traveling
with it).

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 01:04 PM EDT
PJ,

Thank you. I've bookmarked this page for when I get a chrome book.

I've noticed on Ubuntu that the .thumbnails folder tends to grow.
Don't know if that is the case with KDE. You have to show hidden files
to see it. With 'only' 16 gig, you might need to track it.

Clickymaker not signed in.

[ Reply to This | # ]

well done
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 02:01 PM EDT
Excellent write up PJ. The Chromebooks make a nice little take every where
laptop that if it breaks or gets stolen, its not the end of the world. Very
nice especially if you have private cloud resources to use with it. Most of the
chromebooks should have good Linux support as the 3.10 kernel (I believe)
included a bunch of drivers just for them.

There is a talk at OSCON about putting coreboot on the chromebooks and running
linux if anyone is going/interested.

http://www.oscon.com/oscon2013/public/schedule/detail/28506

[ Reply to This | # ]

UEFI secure boot--any experience out there?
Authored by: xtifr on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 03:45 PM EDT

Ok, if even Debian, with its notoriously slow release cycle, now supports installation with secure boot, is SB really that much of a problem any more?

Honest question. I got my latest computer just a couple of weeks before Debian 7.0 was released, so I started my install with 6.0, which didn't support secure-boot installations, so I turned it off before installing. But I really had to think long and hard about it, because technically, secure boot seems like the sort of thing that could be really useful, at least in theory. Having the BIOS check the signature of my kernel before booting is something I'd really like.

In fact, if it weren't for the fact that UEFI/secure boot requires a different partitioning from legacy BIOS mode, I'd probably be experimenting with secure boot even now.

So I'm curious about people's experience using Linux with one of the newer distros that support secure boot. Not rumors and speculation--I can find those all over the internet, and they're drowning out the hard data and actual results in my searches.

(I almost put this under off-topic, but the thread starter said "no secure boot", and this does at least touch, tangentially, on the main topic, so....)

---
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Somewhat disappointed about your UEFI statement.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 06:15 PM EDT
Can I say I'm just somewhat disappointed you chose a "more
closed" platform over UEFI/Secure Boot?

On Chromebooks, you can't have both "secure boot" and "your
own OS".

On x86 UEFI, you can have both "secure boot" and "your own
OS".

By choosing Chrome OS, you've chosen a hardware platform
that eliminates secure boot once you disable it in order to
install Linux (or any OS). On UEFI systems, you technically
do not even have to disable secure boot to install many
Linux OS's (those that have their loader signed by M$), but
you can even sign your own loader/kernel with your own keys
and live on a Microsoft-certificate free machine (and while
it's often hard, you can do this without booting Windows
once).

All UEFI manufacturers are required to make this possible
for the end user in their EFI Bios setups.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Chromebooks are nice, BUT ...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 09 2013 @ 04:36 PM EDT

I actually considered getting one and bought a Raspberry Pi instead. (Actually, two of them.) I am using one of them (albeit not right now as I type this) as a laptop computer, having purchased an HD display (22" variety) because I can't really read the tiny screens that come with the smaller Chromebooks these days. And I like to have a real keyboard on which to type and a real mouse with which to point.

Yes, I know there's a difference between having a desktop computer and a laptop computer, but the customization possibilities of a Raspberry Pi seem endless. I have already successfully installed LibreOffice, LaTeX, LyX, maxima, Wireshark, and all kinds of other things on one of these devices using a 16 GB SD class 10 RAM card, and still have plenty of space for other things, including an ssh server, a remote desktop, several compilers, etc. And if I ever run out of space, I just have to plug in a powered USB hub and I can put on as many storage devices of whatever size I want or need.

Plus, I'm never afraid to do brain surgery on the Pi. All I have to do is pull out the RAM card, make an image of it on another storage device if I want a full backup, and insert a completely different RAM card into the Pi, and voilà - - I have a completely different computer, possibly with a completely different Linux distribution.

I did overpay a bit for my monitor, but I think it is a good one with full HD video support, and I can use it with other computers. The Raspberry Pi itself was $39.95 and was available locally. I had an HDMI cable already, so that cost me nothing. The 16 GB SD card was about $15.00 locally. I bought a keyboard and an optical mouse locally for less than a total of $10.00. And I went ahead and paid an extra $15.00 for a beefy power supply (the type that charges your phone probably is good enough because only 1/2 an Ampere is needed, but I went ahead and got the 1.5 Ampere variety instead to allow the ports to be fully powered.) I also spent $9.00 for a nice, raspberry-colored plastic enclosure. I don't have a ruler handy, but I would say the whole enclosure is 4 inches x 3 inches x 1 inch. If you wanted to, you could stick the whole computer on the back of the monitor using adhesive-backed Velcro. In fact, you could stick SEVERAL of them on the back of the monitor, if you wanted. Then, of course, you need a standard Ethernet cable to connect the thing to the Internet to do browsing, email, and software downloads and updates. You can always add a WiFi dongle later if you want for about $15 or $20.

Which raises the question, why even bother exchanging SD cards in a single Pi, when you can get two or three Pi's and extra SD cards without breaking the bank?

I have even been pleased with the speed of these things. They are not going to beat a powerful laptop or desktop computer, but generally, for my work, they don't need to do so. And the manufacturer of the boards even tells you how to overclock it *and* provides a utility for setting the clock speed!

I can't begin to convey how happy I am with this device. There's even a whole set of pins available for a GPIO port, if you want to take advantage of them. And, with some few exceptions (not applicable to me), the software is either free as in "freedom" or as in "beer," and in almost all cases of interest to me, both.

Your mileage may vary, of course, especially if you really need a laptop with a built-in display and keyboard. But for me, this is Nirvana, because I can actually see what I am doing on my display and type and move a mouse in the manner in which I am already quite accustomed. And, when I want to or need to, I have access to a terminal and the command line.

The only problem is, the local discount computer/computer parts store can't seem to keep enough of these boards in stock -- they almost fly off the shelf these days. But they are making more space for these and other similar items, so if you want a small computer and/or the parts to build a small robot, you can get them now. Easily.

Oh, and if the Raspberry Pi doesn't suit your need, perhaps a Beagle Bone will. I don't have one of these myself, yet, but they are alleged to be about twice as fast as the Raspberry Pi and come with a version of Linux already resident on the board, so you don't need to download a disk image onto an SD Ram to make it work. They don't seem to have as many ports built on board as a Raspberry Pi, however, which may make them less convenient if you just want to put together a simple computer. (I would like to know whether anyone else has any comments on this.) The Pi comes with a power port, a slot to plug in a SD Ram card, a HDMI connector, an Ethernet port, TWO USB-2.0 ports, an audio output, and a standard concentric video output for your old analog TV, if you want or need that.

In any event, I find the Pi to be a perfectly acceptable substitute for buying a computer that can run Linux without going through any of the trouble of having to dual boot anything or try to preserve a second operating system. And there's no UEFI problem to worry about.

[ Reply to This | # ]

My Excellent $199 Chromebook Adventure ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 11 2013 @ 07:55 PM EDT
Thanks for posting this detailed description. I found it useful.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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