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foss nerds stop being condescending to those who don't know the same things you do challenge (impossible)
(files.catbox.moe)
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An edit of xkcd 2501, "Average Familiarity":
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.
partly inspired by the replies to this post but i see this kind of thing all the time (shoutout to the person who once genuinely asked "who still uses google these days?")
made with this neat tool
This seems like a good thread to ask: I got a spare, handmedown chromebook and wanted to linux it. What the fuck should I do for that?
If you are completely new don't yet. Find someone to guide you if you are experienced => https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/getting-started.html I had to do minor soldering for the ones I jailbroke
hmm, if it's an x86 chromebook i'm assuming you could install linux on it like any other x86 device... not sure tbh, i've never done this π
if it's ARM, then postmarketos may be your best bet, it's typically used for phones but they have many laptops supported as well. maybe yours would work!
i've seen stuff like crouton, chrx and galliumOS which are all projects that are supposed to help run linux on chromebooks, but they're all abandoned as of now so i wouldn't recommend them.
If I remember correctly you need to unlock the bootloader by taking the back off it and removing a screw. Then install MrChromebox firmware. Then you can flash a normal linux distro. Ignore all the chromebook specific ones they're all dead and unmaintained. Arch with Sway worked perfectly on my 2015 chromebook with 4gb of ram and the worst cpu ever.
If you haven't installed an OS before, probably find someone who knows what they're doing and ask for help.
Jailbreaking and installing a new OS on a Chromebook usually isn't a simple process, and it can be incredibly specific to the exact model of Chromebook you're working with. Installing Linux is the easy part. The difficult part is jailbreaking the device and installing a new bootloader that can handle non-ChromeOS software. And that process varies depending on what model of Chromebook you have. Some of them will require actual hardware modifications in order to do that, requiring disassembly and reassembly (mine did). For some Chromebooks, it's just not possible at all. And in most cases, there are risks of permanently bricking the device if you do it wrong.
If you can't find someone knowledgeable to hold your hand through it, then you'll need to do lots of research, and not just research into installing Linux on Chromebooks in general -- research into how to do it on your specific model of Chromebook and its specific chipset. Chromebooks are not at all standardized, and exactly what you need to do will depend on exactly which Chromebook you've got.
I've done this with a chromebook recently, first it depends on a model and how old is it. In general you need to disable secureboot in recovery menu, enable 'developer' mode, and allow booting from usb. After that you can install your distro.
When in doubt, Linux Mint.
Windows to Mint, Apple to Ubuntu