My wife is a shopper so I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and other places where they have the Internet. Now I got tired of carrying my Ubuntu laptop around with me all the time so I went… light. Ubuntu light that is. Let me explain.
Years ago, I got my wife a nice little Chromebook, and she loves it. And I did too – except it didn’t have my Ubuntu on it. Well, that’s all changed now. I have my own 11.6” Samsung Chromebook now because there is a way to put Ubuntu on it. The best thing is you can run both the Chrome OS and Ubuntu at the same time. Yes, you can switch back and forth without rebooting. It works the same way as when you run Ubuntu inside Windows. It’s an easy install, just follow the instruction at Crouton. Here is the link. https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/795730-how-to-easily-install-ubuntu-on-chromebook-with-crouton
Once you have it installed, it is so simple to run Ubuntu right from the Chrome OS. You open a terminal, Alt/Ctrl “T”. Type the word shell, then one of the following:
sudo startkde
sudo startxfce
sudo startunity
depending on which desktop you installed. Then, to jump back to Chrome OS when you are running Ubuntu, you just hold down the Shift/Ctrl/Alt and press the arrow keys at the top of the keyboard.
Seeing as I do not have a touchscreen on the Chromebook, I went with installing the KDE desktop. I tried Unity, but with the smaller screen KDE seemed a better choice.
Overall, this worked out for me. Now I have a used Chromebook for $115, running Kubuntu on a 2.5 pound lightweight computer to carry around from coffee shop to coffee shop.