People have started to get their shiny and sleek $249 Google Chromebook. As expected many enthusiasts and developers have started trying out their own GNU/Linux based operating systems on this awesome device. Since it is powered by ARM, it has quite a lot of advantages over the ones running Intel chips. Google is really pushing the Linux desktop in the right direction.
Andrew Wafaa, Principle Engineer, Open Source at ARM who is responsible for porting openSUSE to ARM just got his hands on the Chromebook and he managed to run openSUSE on it.
I ordered it specifically to have a good mobile ARM development platform. So after having used the bundled ChromeOS for the first half of the day I decided it was time to get this machine’s Geeko on. Thankfully one of the Google employed developers , Olof Johansson, was kind enough to post his steps to get Linux on the machine. So after my meetings were done, I downloaded the openSUSE 12.2 RC1 JeOS image and followed Olof’s steps. Everything worked a treat and it was an exceptionally painless process, and proof is in the blurry cam.
If you own this awesome device, you can also try to run openSUSE on it. Google developer Olof Johansson has posted detailed how to on his Google + page, which you can read here.
I only wish I had this ARM powered Chromebook.
Source:
Swapnil Bhartiya
A free software fund-a-mental-ist and Charles Bukowski fan, Swapnil also writes fiction and tries to find cracks in a proprietary company's 'paper armours'. He is a big movie buff and prefers listening to music at such high volumes that he's gone partially deaf when it comes to identifying anything positive about proprietary companies. You can follow him on Twitter, Google+ & Facebook. You can write to him on editor at muktware dot com
