this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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Help choosing distro for old EOL Chromebook (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by jrgn@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I have an Acer Chromebook R11 which has reached End of Life and won't receive updates (which is insane, I bought it new four years ago). I have checked, and my model is now fully supported by most Linux distros.

I need suggestions for a lightweight distro to use. I will use the machine for surfing, playing Pixel Dungeon, streaming some indie games over Moonlight/Steam Headless and manage my home server over ssh. So nothing major. I want something lightweight and really low maintenance.

Specs:

  • Processor: 1.6GHz quad-core Intel Celeron N3150 (quad-core, 3MB cache, up to 2.08GHz with Turbo Boost)

  • Graphics: Integrated Intel HD Graphics

  • Memory: 4GB DDR3L

  • Storage: 32GB (with SD card reader for more storage)

I have a lot of experience with Arch-based (EndeavourOS, Manjaro), Ubuntu-based (Mint, PopOS) and Debian-based (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Raspbian) distros, but I am open for other suggestions

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[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

BIOS & mobo

First you need to look if your Chromebook is even supported for running coreboot.

mrchromebox.tech/#devices

Storage

Your Storage is pretty low. Adding an SD card with up to 256GB is very possible. There are even 1TB SD cards!

But best to check if you can replace the emmc module inside.

Open it up and send us a pic of the internals. Also search online.

Increasing the emmc storage will give you the best speed. Using a USB stick/ flashdrive is not recommended as those are not meant for running an OS off of them.

RAM

pretty low but not extremely. 4GB is pretty fine.

You can work around it by using a Distro using ZRAM, like Fedora.

Ask here or on discussion.fedoraproject.org how to make ZRAM fill all your RAM.

ZRAM compresses your RAM contents with zstd (imagine it like .zip but worlds better), so you have 12GB or more space. But it consumes more CPU power, which should be a fine tradeoff.

Desktop

While preeetty outdated in default design on Fedora, it is the most lightweight Desktop that will soon (version 6.1) have Wayland support.

Lubuntu has a better theming and maybe better support, see if ZRAM works on Ubuntu base.

Distro

I would recommend Fedora Atomic Desktops a lot.

But as LXQt is likely the best desktop, and it doesnt have the best support on Fedora, I would recomment Lubuntu.

Even though I would give KDE a try, you can strip it down really well. Here, Fedora Kinoite is absolute king.

[–] jrgn@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Wow, thanks for this write-up! I will definitely look into ZRAM! I have been wanting to give Fedora Atomic a go

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

First look if your Chromebook is supported.

You can do this in ChromeOS. The model number needs to match exactly.

Chromebooks run some version of Coreboot but that includes many proprietary drivers.

Mrchromebox is an awesome developer, patching coreboot to include all the needed drivers.

[–] jrgn@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thanks! I have figured all that out. I went with Tumbleweed for now, because I had it lying around on a USB stick and wanted to see if it worked. Looks like it works pretty much out of box. I found a ZRAM guide too. Might distro jump over to Fedora though

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 months ago

Tumbleweed is better than traditional Fedora. But it is worse than Fedora Atomic Desktops.

The key words are

rpm-ostree reset
rpm-osree rebase
rpm-ostree status

this is not possible even on OpenSUSEs "immutable" distros, which to my knowledge are not better than Tumbleweed in any way.