So it has been quite a while since I last played with Linux. Thar was on an EEEPC hence the user name. The idea then was to provide a mini portable system to do what I needed on the road. In the end I turned it into a Hackintosh and it is still around dedicated to mac software for an old ETC lighting desk.
Back in December I was again looking for a lightweight portable and cheap machine so I thought I would try a Chromebook. What I went for was a very cheap refurbished DELL 11" thing, what I was not aware of until I had it was that it was so old it was beyond updates from Google, stupid me I had not done enough research into Chrome OS. This was frustrating as I wanted to do stuff that I couldn't in the old Chrome OS I was lumbered with. I had a bit if a go at installing Linux through Crostini that failed miserably so went for the UEFI option to make a more natively installable system. I tried a few distros but have run into some issues:

Gallium OS: THis should have been the easy solution as it is intended for Chromebooks but the installer fails. Of the USB it runs well and seems OK and I have got the correct installer for the BAy-Trail processor in this DELL.

Elementary: This looks great and runs well from USB but fails to install in the 16GB MMS drive I can't see how to get it to run within a 64GB SD card it keeps trying to work with the inadequate MMS

Nitrux: Looks clunky and doesn't play well with trackpad and touch screen

Chrome Flex: Well I thought I would give this a go to get over the hurdles of the native ancient Chrome OS. This works surprisingly well but seems to have even bigger problems with the 16GB MMS leaving only 6 GB available after install which only allows about 3GB for the built in Linux which is not enough to install any of the programs I want to run. Also sound doesn't work!

So any ideas as to a distro that might work in such limited space, or even why Gallium won't play?


It is unfortunately impossible to increase memory or MMS on this machine. If there is away to install and run an OS fully on the SD that might be a solution, otherwise I need to find another really cheap small laptop to do what I want. I do like the idea of a convertible but not really aware of any distro that would be optimised for this type of device again any suggestions for a machine/ distro for this scenario would be helpful!

Thank , Kevan

This post is a tale of woe that belongs in a blog. I am posting to take it off the 'zero replies' list. Have a read of How_To_Ask_a_Question before you post again.

My estimation of chromebooks is that they're probably good enough to be given away free in breakfast cereal packets.

For sure you can get one of your friends to roll a live OS on a usb key and if you can boot from there, you're good to go - even on a chromebook. If you have bash on your chomebook, you might try liveslak.org for a good live OS. You make it with the iso2usb.sh script. It uses squashfs tools which you might have to install wherever you're making the live usb.

1 members found this post helpful.

https://www.antixforum.com/forums/to...l-iso-install/

Good luck. Use the 23.1 runit 64 bit full iso if I was you. / is on 16 gig internal ssd drive.
I have /home installed on sd card slipped into the side.

Good. I'll take 2.