recent days I find Chromebook may be better Arm devices with laptop form factor.

compare with Pinebook pro, Chromebooks are cheaper, and mass product, and better tested.

 

why no much people discuss how to install 3rd OS to its internal emmc, or reflash its uboot?

 

I have searched on ArchArm forum, only 1 topic.

 

but there actually a way to reflash uboot, and mainline uboot already has support for arm based chromebooks.

 

It should be easy, but why no discussion?

 

I guess no one here owns a rockchip chromebook to discuss about

in case you already have one and want to get started, this is a bootable sd card image working on some rk3288 chromebooks: https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/releases/tag/200526-01 - maybe you can use it as a starting point for a proper armbian port (the image is just plain debian/ubuntu and not armbian)

 

some more relevant info about getting linux working or making it nicer on such chromebooks:

https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/tree/master/files/chromebook-boot

https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/blob/master/boot/boot-chromebook_veyron-armv7l/chromebook-boot/cbr.dd-secondary-gpt.readme

https://github.com/hexdump0815/u-boot-chainloading-for-arm-chromebooks

https://github.com/hexdump0815/linux-mainline-and-mali-generic-stable-kernel/blob/master/readme.cbr

 

best wishes - hexdump

thanks @hexdump, I read your project, and I have found some other, it looks like all the effort is to install in 3rd OS to external storage.

 

why?

no - you can install to internal emmc just fine too and you can even get rid of the chromeos boot screen ... i run my snow and veyron chromebooks this way and they run quite well ... the images are just to have an easy starting point for others who want to play around with linux on this hardware as its much easier to do all the preparations for an emmc install from a running linux system instead from chromeos and its also handy to have a working sd card linux system around in case one breaks the emmc install ... i decided for chainloading u-boot for booting as trying to install a new low level boot loader is a lot of hassle and you can really brick the device

my flip just arrived, 4+32.

it's used, but in good condition.

 

I have sent email to maintainer ask help for build flash u-boot.

but need approve to send email to u-boot mailing list.

I have one actually (veyron), but it seemed like a pain in the ... to flash it so it got forgotten.

so i'm lucky, just buy a cheaper one, not Samsung chromebook plus.

used flip only 230RMB, samsung plus will be 1000RMB

Mine is an "EPIK" branded model, Veyron Jerry.  I got it for almost nothing.  I'd be willing to take a look at if there's a way to wipe the entire coreboot mess off the SPI and start over.

I think may be we can remove spi flash from motherboard, thus switch to emmc boot or SDcard boot.

what is the big problem with the spi flash? if you flash a chainloaded u-boot instead of the chromeos kernel it can be used just normally using that mainline u-boot using regular gpt partitions etc. ... another reason might the the blob character of the early boot stages, but i would say half of the armbian supported systems need some kind of blob (scp firmware, memory initialization etc.) for booting

 

best wishes - hexdump

I have no problem with SPI flash when it doesnt require me to take extra steps to get basic functionality.  I'm just not sure why you can't just load the u-boot preloader directly into flash and forget about tapdancing around all the chromebook knock off u-boot stuff.

 

If yanking it works though (it should, really), that's probably what I'll do, I have the tools to do it and keep the SPI in case I need it.

Also thinking about trying Armbian on my Asus C100PA Chromebook. Can I try this too? https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/releases/tag/200526-01

that one is not really armbian - but you can try it as a start - not sure if it will boot out of the box on an asus c100pa, but with some dtb trying/tweaking it might work ... it works for me on a medion s2013 chromebook ... in case you get it booting, do not expect wlan etc. to work out of the box for sure

 

good luck and best wishes - hexdump

bumping and resurrecting old thread.

Looks like there is an interest to use chromebooks with linux, but most people face problems with fine tuning kernel to given hardware. I will try out hexdump's image on flip c100, and I hope this will be the first one kernel with bluetooth support for c100.

Anyway if there are any news about c100 - feel free to share. I don't expect any sudden release of armbian for c100, but any suggestions how to make hardware working better with mainline kernel will be more than welcome.

 

humble Armbian user on Tinkerboard

@crr - if you try my image, please put your findings into a github issue of the corresponding repo ... there is another quite up to date try to get linux working on chromebooks here as well: https://github.com/Maccraft123/Cadmium - might be worth to have a look at this one too

 

good luck and best wishes - hexdump

 

maybe look at galliumOS for chromebooks. Being battery powered devices you likely want video hw acceleration and battery friendly tweaks, for rk3399 some work for chromebooks was leveraged for wider community. The other thing is trackpad support which is notoriously bad in linux, galliumOS uses original ChromeOS drivers.  Has XFCE Xubuntu desktop

... but galliumos does not support arm chromebooks ...

@ScottPthere are couple of sources for arm chromebooks, which partially support rk3288 hardware, I think there is still to come with mainline kernel 5.x if finally it will support remaining rockchip features (like mpp etc) and stabilize panfrost driver. Others obstacles were removed, and c100 (and some other chromebooks too) can work pretty well.

I even could imagine some support for c100 from armbian - even as CSC, because most problems were resolved along with other 3288 issues on other boards. It's just the matter of finding interested people and basic testing.

Well hi developer..Hexdump0815 thanks 😊 for the good armv71 ubuntu update but can u please help me with how to flash it to internal emmc storage of the acer chromebook CB5 311 

@A.Rahman - this is the armbian forum here and thus the wrong place to discuss this, so if you want to discuss something about my (non armbian) images, then please better open a github issue or discussion in the repo of those images