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This is a great write-up about installing Linux on Chromebook.
Thank you for sharing it!
Wow! Serendipitous, I was just doing the same thing on my duet (trogdor) but I was focused on using Claude to enable the camera (missing in the device tree). I taught it to use depthcharge to reboot into the previous Kernel if a build failed; otherwise boot and start the same Claude chat so I could just let it iterate for days. It took a day to get something usable, pretty amazing.
Then I setup `howdy` to use the camera for auth.
now I’m just trying to figure out if I’m allowed to submit this upstream. Postmarketos explicitly rejects LLM submission, but I can submit it to linux-next. Seems to me a shame, this enables folks who have devices and want to fix things (but lack the time/knowledge) to use these LLM powers for a very good cause.
Plasma mobile has been really great for me, you should try it out!
I tried (and gave up) to do the same on my trogdor with postmarket because it was the only thing really missing for it to be a daily driver. Any chance you could publish what Claude did ? This article and thread tells me there are more people hacking on the duet than I thought. Maybe we'll be a handful to use your patch.
I just did something similar to bring mainline Linux to my Daylight DC-1 [1] [2], although possibly more difficult since I had to start from scratch.
I can guarantee the same amount of work, without AI, takes probably 10x or more time (I did it in the past w/ the Google Pixel C [3]).
Unfortunately it looks like pmOS is against AI [4], so I'll likely switch away from pmOS and never contribute a single line in the future. Too bad, I was a huge fan [5].
[1]: https://daylightcomputer.com/product
[2]: https://x.com/DenysVitali/status/2091238391710888416
[3]: https://github.com/pixelc-linux/documentation
[4]: https://docs.postmarketos.org/policies-and-processes/develop...
[5]: https://blog.denv.it/posts/pmos-k3s-cluster/
Sometimes I have to log in just to ask:
Why would you think one of the more beloved projects for linux mobile phones would be pro-AI?
Because one of the biggest hurdles to porting the Linux kernel and device-specific software to more hardware and making existing hardware work better is one of the things that "AI" can (seemingly, caveat) do surprisingly well?
Not to say PM (or any other project) should/shouldn't use AI. There are plenty of other salient reasons to reject AI. But given (from what I remember) postmarket's goal is basically saving as many phones from becoming ewaste as possible, well, an LLM could actually be a formidable way to get more hardware than ever running.
This.
Why would you waste 2 years to port Linux to an old / a device when you can literally do it in ~10 days and save many devices from turning into e-waste?
I really don't get their approach. Besides, Linux (and Linus) accepts and are doing AI contributions, so their argument makes no sense (since they're a Linux distro)
I would also add on top of those points that nobody will ever get paid for mainlining old phones, these are side projects by nature, meaning, not full time.
And since it's such a hard task without AI (and it's still not easy even with it), almost none will ever be mainlined just because of the size of the task
Ever? Nobody?
Sometimes the base has to fight the insanity coming from the top down.
Except nothing about AI produces properly open source code? You can't prove it didn't pull from closed source code, no more clean room approaches if everyone just wants to bow to the LLMs.
Even beyond all the other ethical issues I don't see how the open source world accepts this.
In your case, it seems you had an automated (semi-automated, maybe?) feedback loop. In my case, I was the feedback loop :D which ended up being the bottleneck for some parts...
Yes! Removing the human in the loop speeds up the process. Models are better than the average SW engineer nowadays, so this isn't _that_ unsafe... and it really speeds things up
someone needs to do this for the arm Surface Pro 11.
Cool but my Duet is the later generation with MediaTek Kompanio 838 :(
I really like the form factor. I use my PC at home and corp laptop for work, and I don't need another powerhouse laptop. A lightweight 2-in-1 tablet works well for me. But I never found an OS doing well in both desktop and tablet modes. Most Windows and Linux apps are for desktop. ChromeOS with ArcVM is supposed to work but the performance is terrible. I hope Android desktop mode would do better.
Recently I was in the market for what I would call a 'low cost linux netbook/tablet' and settled on the Chuwi Minibook X. It has an Intel N150 processor, 16GB of memory and a 512GB nvme drive. For less than $300. I am wildly impressed by it. Touchpad is really terrible but otherwise it is a surprisingly compelling little device. I am still fine tuning the tablet mode stuff -- it doesn't have any hinge measurement sensors it relies on an accelerometer in each half. Codex has been helping me write some cool tools to debug and parse those raw readings into "im in laptop mode" or "im in tablet mode, disable kb/touchpad". I just installed KDE Plasma Mobile yesterday which is quite a cool alternate DE that is more suited to tablets. Here is a video of that codex tooling to help debug the hinge situation: https://www.threads.com/@whalesalad/post/DdYNriIAFO4
Got my Minibook X U300 yesterday and I’m facing the same issues. Please share your findings as you go, this a cool little machine for Linux.
kinda cool, looks like a laptop
For x86 based ChromeOS devices check https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/supported-devices.html It allows installing a standard UEFI environment if supported.
I went to LinuxFest Northwest a few months ago, and there was a booth giving away Chromebooks that had been wiped and had a version of NixOS installed on there for free. I very seriously considered grabbing one, but I was only traveling with a backpack which was already pretty full, and I think my wife would (rightfully) give me a dirty look if I hoarded more tech that I'll only use like twice a year.
I kind of regret it now. Oh well, I'll probably come across another cheap Chromebook soon enough to play with.
I actually just pulled out my old Duet and took a quick look to see if I could just put proper Linux on it. Didn't seem feasible for the amount of effort I was willing to put into it, so I bailed. Reading this, though, I now see I was definitely right and I'm glad I didn't sink much time into the endeavour lol
Cool post nonetheless!
I recently put Debian on an old 13" Asus Chromebook. It was surprisingly easy! I don't remember doing much other than removing a screw and installing a UEFI firmware on it. Everything worked out of the box.
It works pretty well too, as long as you temper your expectations around 4GB of RAM and aren't expecting to watch YouTube on it. (Older machines and phones are just not at all happy about 60fps videos.)
IME it's generally trivial for x86 Chromebooks, but still hit-and-miss for ARM.
The lowest spec machine I have been able to get 60fps 720p video out of Youtube is a 2nd Gen i5 2.4Ghz. Anything lower and the frames start dropping.
It is funny that during that time period, Intel's media decoders got significantly faster in a very short period of time. My 4th gen 2Ghz i5 decodes video better than my 2nd Gen 3.8Ghz i7.
I was shocked, in 2026, to know how hard it is to find a good tablet. iPad is out of question for me, gifted mine to my gf (the only apple device I ever bought).
Landed on a Lenovo Idea Tab pro, which has so much junk pre-installed that keep installing other malware on it.
We need rules that take companies responsible when they trick people into hands of scammers.
As long as I can't unlock its bootloader, it's not much better than that iPad.