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Article author here. Anecdotally the battery life takes a bit of a hit, but I've been running it pretty hard to get everything installed. I haven't done any t

by jerbils 14y ago

Article author here. Anecdotally the battery life takes a bit of a hit, but I've been running it pretty hard to get everything installed. I haven't done any tests. I have a suspicion that Chrome limits its CPU usage, and the chroot does not. That said, the battery life isn't completely shot in the chroot. I got my Chromebook on Monday, so I haven't updated it after initial boot. I'm not sure about the updating issues, but you can always go into non-Developer Mode and update from there. If that causes problems for the chroot, it's really easy to back up the chroot (it's just a directory) and reinstall it with Crouton: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton#you-want-to-make-a-bootstrap-tarball-and-create-a-chroot-from-that https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton#you-want-to-make-a-boot... So in other words, I can't answer any of those questions yet, sorry!

habosa 14y ago
Thanks for the preliminary response. I am very tempted to do all of this "hacker" stuff to my Chromebook but I'm worried that's a slippery slope. As is I have no local files, no battery worries, so it's essentially a maintenance free machine. Once I start doing local work I'm going to want more and more until it's basically just a netbook. I think it's maybe good for me to have a machine where I can't constantly be tinkering.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  There's always USB booting [0], you can still tinker but can't muck up CrOS [0] http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung-chromebook http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung-chromebook
  - dhruvmittal 14y ago
    If you did this, would there be a significant lag from i/o? I assume sticking a Class 10 SD card in it and booting archARM would be pretty quick, but still slower than the SSD that ships with the machine.
    - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
      Haven't tried on this machine specifically, but never noticed much lag as a result of running from USB on others. There is a USB3 port on the back if you're concerned about performance (just remember this is a $250 ARM laptop, not a MacBook Pro).

by jerbils 14y ago

habosa 14y ago

Thanks for the preliminary response. I am very tempted to do all of this "hacker" stuff to my Chromebook but I'm worried that's a slippery slope. As is I have no local files, no battery worries, so it's essentially a maintenance free machine. Once I start doing local work I'm going to want more and more until it's basically just a netbook. I think it's maybe good for me to have a machine where I can't constantly be tinkering.

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
There's always USB booting [0], you can still tinker but can't muck up CrOS [0] http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung-chromebook http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung-chromebook
- dhruvmittal 14y ago
  If you did this, would there be a significant lag from i/o? I assume sticking a Class 10 SD card in it and booting archARM would be pretty quick, but still slower than the SSD that ships with the machine.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    Haven't tried on this machine specifically, but never noticed much lag as a result of running from USB on others. There is a USB3 port on the back if you're concerned about performance (just remember this is a $250 ARM laptop, not a MacBook Pro).