GalliumOS

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tlmiller
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GalliumOS

Post by tlmiller »

Not sure if there's any chromebook lovers here, but if there are, GalliumOS is the best OS for you.

GalliumOS is based on Ubuntu 16.04, running a heavily customized XFCE desktop w/ lxdm display manager. The key to it is that the Gallium dev team have actually pulled the chromeos hardware patches for audio & touchpads and patched the Ubuntu kernel with them. It also has the chromeos audio stack, so you get a linux OS that the audio "just works" out of the box, and the touchpads work perfectly out of the box as well, with no touchiness or jumping, it works just as well as it did with chrome on it.

With the mrchromebox firmware (customized coreboot), your Chromebook will actually become a fully functional UEFI laptop, including a firmware splash screen when booting.

Obviously, if you're not a fan of xfce (such as myself), being based on Ubuntu means you've got TONS of other desktops to choose from that you can install. My personal install has xfce & lxdm removed, and replaced by Trinity + TDM. On the modest hardware that my chromebook has (N2940, 4 GB ram, 16 GB eMMC, 1080P 14"), it runs rather well, has plenty of capacity (7 GB still free space, and that's even with having a 6 GB swap partition) for basic usage.

If there's anyone that's wanted to play around with a chromebook but wanted a real OS on it, you definitely should check out the mrchromebox firmware and GalliumOS.
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crosscourt
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Re: GalliumOS

Post by crosscourt »

If I was not doing as many things as i do now Chromebooks would satisfy me totally and a great price at that. In my area its popular for education use and has taken over where Apple at one time was the main choice.
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Re: GalliumOS

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I actually carry my chromebook to work a lot. I often need to test things at work, and it being a small company, IT doesn't get laptops. So I'll use whatever personal laptop I'm carrying with me to do my testing, and since it's one of the lightest (the Acer is also really light, not sure which is lighter) and best battery life, I carry this a lot.
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Re: GalliumOS

Post by crosscourt »

Im just the opposite as I almost never carry or use a laptop. Ive got one in my office at work and use one when working with clients but i tend to be on desktops most of the time. My USFF Dell Optiplex 7010 though I carry around the house and attach to my tvs and monitors for use.
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Re: GalliumOS

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Yeah, I'm pretty much NEVER without a laptop. I take one with me when I play paintball, I take one when I go out to eat (if I'm not going with my wife). I always take one to work. Part of it is that ever 3rd week, I'm on call at work and since we don't get corporate laptops, I just carry my own and VPN in if needed (although I'm very strict about what I'll work on, and if I get called about something I feel isn't an emergency, I'll ignore it).
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crosscourt
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Re: GalliumOS

Post by crosscourt »

Given your work, understandable as Ive got IT friends who live with their laptops. I like tinkering with desktops and working with different form factors.
Ask my wife as Im always modding,tinkering and trying to imprve various aspects of all my desktops. bad habits from the old days.

Im sure down the road Ill end up more laptop oriented with less cash and space.
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Re: GalliumOS

Post by tlmiller »

While I'm waiting for GalliumOS 3.0 (18.04 base), I was reading the GalliumOS reddit today, and someone posted about adding the Neon repos to GalliumOS to get an up-to-date KDE desktop. Don't know why it never occurred to me to try that, but currently installing the updated Plasma 5.12.5 from Neon repos onto my GalliumOS 2.x installation.

I'll report back after it's done just in case there's anyone here that has a chromebook or wants to get one to run GalliumOS on it.
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Re: GalliumOS

Post by tlmiller »

Successful. Had to run multiple apt dist-upgrade apt install -f apt autoremove --purge cycles to get everything updated, but in the end everything did successfully update. Now running Plasma 5.12.5 on GalliumOS 2.x (based on 16.04). Also have the libreoffice-fresh ppa installed, so have the latest 6.0.4 of that, so although there are some very dated packages, the important packages are still up to date now.

As an aside, it does seem a bit more responsive now with the latest plasma.
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Re: GalliumOS

Post by crosscourt »

Mint isnt going to have their 18.04 version out till June maybe July so it will come eventually with Gallium.
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Re: GalliumOS

Post by tlmiller »

Yeah, I just did this to keep it up to date with KDE while waiting.
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