Some details on the internal chrome shell: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/poking-around-your-chrome-os-device That particular samsung chromebook has a reputation for running Ubuntu with good benchmarks, though I didn't immediately find good instructions on how to make it happen, and I don't know if the full range of drivers are available. Also note that it uses an ARM processor, not x86. --Adam On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 9:08 AM, Brian D. Ropers-Huilman < brian at ropers-huilman.net> wrote: > Mike, > > I haven't seen any other answers to your query come in, so I thought > I'd take a stab. > > Google's Chromebooks are _very_ specialized laptops. While the > underlying OS is Linux and while it may use a Gentoo packaging system, > the user does not have acces to any of it. The machine and the OS are > custom designed to _only_ run the Chrome web browser. > > That's it. > > Nothing else. > > So, the concept of getting a shell and compiling other code is out. > > Having said that, ... there is a built in "terminal" in the browser, > so you can ssh to other machines. Last I checked or used it, it didn't > support SSH tunnels, but they were working on it. There are also apps > that allow VNC connections. So, you might be able to do what you want > anyway. > > The apps I'm talking about, by the way, are Chrome apps. So, a good > test to see if a Chromebook is right for you is to sit down at your > current Linux box, open Chrome OS, and then see if you can get your > work done. You'd need to start by looking at the apps available in the > Chrome Web Store: > > https://chrome.google.com/webstore > > There's a lot there. These apps run in one of two ways: as a > "weblication" that basically takes you to a web site or as an > in-browser app that's likely running via Javascript and other > HTML5/CSS wizardry. > > If you can get through a week's worth of day-to-day work using nothing > but the Chrome browser and the apps you find, then go get a Chromebook > as it will be perfect for you. I'm one such candidate, but I'm a > cheap, frugal sort and just haven't ponied up the money to go get one > yet. I'd love one! > > Hope this helps. > > P.S. Go to a Best Buy and play with one. You should be able to get the > store person to take it out of "demo" mode so you can actually log > into your own Google account. Doing so will auto-magically load all > the "apps" you've installed in your Linux Chrome browser right onto > the machine (it's all synced via the Google cloud), so you'll be able > to test your real situation on a real Chromebook before you make a > purchase decision. > > -- > Brian D. Ropers-Huilman > 612.234.7778 (m) > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20130113/ac3f2b46/attachment.html>