This will cause the device to boot into recovery mode.

On most Chromebooks, this can be done by holding down the ‘Escape’ and ‘Refresh’ keys and pressing the ‘Power’ button. The first step in getting the Chromebook ready to run full-fledged Linux is putting it into developer mode. Getting the Chromebook Ready Developer Mode The goal is to have full ROM support, but ‘BOOT_STUB’ should work, but really isn’t ideal, and isn’t recommended. Before doing anything else, go over to and check. The developer who has been working on getting these Chromebook ROMs up and running as well as developing the script to install them easily has an excellent table on his website to check if your Chromebook is supported. After all, it wouldn’t be too good to get halfway through this only to find out that your Chromebook isn’t supported. This method was tested with the extremely common Acer 7XX series, but it should work(maybe with subtle differences) on other Chromebooks as well.īefore doing anything, make sure that this will work on your Chromebook. Another thing to keep in mind before getting started is that there are a ton of different Chromebooks. It should be noted that you should check which type of processor your Chromebook is running first, this method only supports Intel based Chromebooks. With a few relatively simple steps, that $300 Chromebook can become a full fledged Linux laptop running just about any distribution. In many cases, Chromebooks are supported by the FOSS Coreboot project, meaning that there is a completely unlocked, free and open source version of the Chromebook BIOS just waiting to be installed. So, what does a Linux user believing in the potential of their little (sort of)Linux laptop do? Break everything Google did. Many users, especially Linux users, can’t get past the fact that the devices are hopelessly hamstrung by their ChromeOS operating system which both cuts down on the number of apps the device can run and makes it dependent on an Internet connection to get anything done. Google’s little Linux based PCs have been booming since their introduction several years ago in everything from homes to businesses, and even educational settings. Proceed at your own risk.Ĭhromebooks are everywhere.

As with all firmware flashes, there is a chance of something going wrong, rendering the device useless. WARNING: This process will erase all information from the Chromebook hard drive.

Replacing chrome os with linux