ChromeOS laptops from now on also Linux laptops :)

wmertens · May 9, 2019, 9:40pm

We’ll need nixpkgs on there I’m thinking this might be good enough to switch from my MacBook…

monotux · May 10, 2019, 6:14am

Linux on Chromebook laptops is not a dual-boot operation. You’re running both operating systems simultaneously.

wmertens · May 10, 2019, 7:09am

Myeah the reporting isn’t great - it’s bullet point 77 on the “100 things we announced at I/O '19” list. I suppose this means that all new Chromebooks will have working Crostini, without jumping through any hoops.

xte · May 10, 2019, 7:58am

Hi,
IMVHO any Google product should be avoided right now. In the past
they have made pretty decent devices from Google Mini/Appliance to
Nexus devices. Since few years they only sell crap.

To be even more rude: anything built on “new” paradigms is more and
more crap to a point that it’s super-hard to find only *laptops that
are decent enough to be bought…

Even if I agree with LJ article [1] for me the race toward a Free
computing is lost, at least for the next decade so FOSS projects
that can better invest energy in “geek tech” not in generic one.

However community is community so I always welcome any way to spread
FOSS

– Ingmar

[1] We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible | Linux Journal

nh2 · May 12, 2019, 2:50am

I’ve been working on a nix-based solution to easily put PlopKexec on an SD card, USB stick, or directly the Chromebook SSD, with which you can directly boot any Linux OS from disk or any Linux live USB.

It’s not cleaned up at all yet, but it works.

github.com

nh2/chrubuntu-anyos/blob/2bc5ffb7f202e4f5415d7cf387b90f625d3fbd35/nixos-rootfs.nix

# Build with:
#     NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=$HOME/src/nixpkgs nix-build --no-link '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -A config.system.build.tarball -I nixos-config=thisfile.nix
# You can also use
#     -A config.system.build.toplevel
# to build something you can browse locally (that uses symlinks into your nix store).
# You can use
#     -A config.system.build.initialRamdisk
# to build directly the initrd if you want to iterate on that.

{config, pkgs, ...}:
let
  kernelImageFullPath =
    "${config.boot.kernelPackages.kernel}/" +
    "${config.system.boot.loader.kernelFile}";

  initrdFullPath =
    "${config.system.build.initialRamdisk}/initrd";

  # PlopKexec needs a static busybox build.
  plopkexec-busybox = pkgs.busybox.override { enableStatic = true; };

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I found two kernel regressions related to EFI on the way, one is fixed and one is still waiting for a fix.

I’ll write it up soon, I hope.

matthewbauer · May 12, 2019, 3:20am

Someone wrote a page on the wiki for getting crostini working with NixOS:

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Installing_on_Crostini

samueldr · May 12, 2019, 5:20pm

And, for completeness’ sake, since “running the actual distro” showed up, it’s possible on some, if not most, x86_64-based chromeos devices to install an alternate firmware that ~~works like~~ is a standard UEFI firmware.

https://mrchromebox.tech/

I used those on my c720p when it was my daily driver, and now am using it on my new laptop.

All of this is enabled by the chromeos team using coreboot and upstreaming changes as much as possible. It should be possible to build coreboot yourself too, but some bits necessary for the toolchain are not present in Nixpkgs. (In addition to figuring out how to get the required blobs.)