Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Three days ago, my HP Chromebook 11 G5 acquired the ability to load Linux apps when Chromeos was updated to Version 70.0.3524.2 (Official Build) dev (64-bit).
Since then, I have been busy learning how to implement this.
It is rather exciting - given my past experience with this machine and the decision to remove Developer Mode because of security considerations. Developer Mode and Crouton had allowed me to run Chromeos and UbuntuMate at the same time, but made the machine much less secure than one running Chromeos normally.
It is now possible to create a Crostini VM and Linux container very easily, and there is no security compromise when starting the machine.
A few Googles on the internet quickly resolved what was needed to initiate the VM and container - see below.
Following this advice, I was able to use crosh to open a container, run xclock and Visual Studio Code.
Initially having opened a crosh window [Ctl + Alt + t], I typed:
vmc start dev
and was rewarded with - (termina)
chronos@localhost ~ $
This indicates that you have a functional VM. You have to wait a while for the VM to download.
Next, you need to
run_container.sh –container_name=stretch –user=rob –shell
but substitute your user name for 'rob'.
This downloads a Debian Stretch image and takes quite a bit of time unless you have masses of bandwidth.
Once the required files have been downloaded
rob@stretch ~ $
appears.
Using Terminal which appears in a Linux app group after the VM is downloaded is much easier because you don't have to supply ‘run_container.sh –container_name=stretch –user=rob –shell’ - each time you initiate the container after starting the VM. Clicking on the Terminal app starts both VM and container.
My standard Linux load is nano, wget, Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Stellarium, Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code. When you load Gimp, you end up with ImageMagick as well.
Although I loaded Chromium yesterday, and used it to access Dataplicity for upload and download of files through Nextcloud on my RASPI, this is not necessary.
When Terminal is working properly, it is possible to upload and download files through the Chromeos Files Linux (Beta) folder.
Have now removed Chromium.
Have worked on files in Gimp, Inkscape and Scribus, and moved them between Linux and Chromeos.
This HP Chromebook 11 G5 - with 4 MB RAM and a 16 GB drive, is a bit lacking in space for Linux.
4 MB RAM & a 32 GB SSD/emmc would be better. A touch screen for the grandchildren and Storytime would be nice too!
Now have icons for Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Stellarium, Sublime Text, Terminal and Visual Studio Code as a Linux group on the shelf.
The Google team appear to have done a brilliant job of integrating Linux with Chromeos, given their system security guidelines.
They are keen to make Linux tools, editors and IDEs available to Chromebook users, especially developers.
In addition to Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code, have loaded Atom, Bluefish and Brackets - all of which work normally. Atom, Brackets and Visual Studio Code need additional repositories to be added. Hence the need for wget.
References:
From scratch to VS Code _ Crostini.mhtml, Crostini 101 _ Crostini.mhtml and What Linux apps on Chrome OS means for open source - TechRepublic.mhtml.