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There are pages that exist expressly for this purpose - Google has one when you need to login to an access point on Android (described here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/network-portal-detection), and Apple has http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html
There's also http://example.com/ , which is always raw http.
I've implemented many full featured USB type-C ports on my devices. If you're doing the full featured specification with all the goodies, there are some gotchas - it's a complicated collection of specs, and currently many professionals still make some mistakes here and there.
The great news is that the USB consortium put a lot of thought into making implementing a "classic" USB port (with just 5V low current power and LS/FS/HS data), super simple.
All you need is a single pulldown resistor on each CC pin. You can deal with the cable flippability by shorting the two D+ pins together, and doing the same with the D- pins. The power rules are identical to type-A ports.
USB Power Delivey is a bit more complicated as it's an actual protocol with it's own unique signalling, and the power consumption is negotiated. Depending on what you're using PD for, this can make it easy or hard to use.
You can implement the PD protocol in a few different ways. If you have unique requirements, you can actually use the STM32 to do the PD communication (schematics and code here). If you're trying to do something fairly standard, you can instead use a standalone USB PD chip.
And in case anyone was wondering, Android [uses|https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/network-portal-detection] the significantly less-memorable http://clients3.google.com/generate_204. And Firefox seems to use http://detectportal.firefox.com, although I can't find first-party documentation supporting that.
Chrome OS has support for A/B updates up and down the firmware/software stack.
Software updates on Chrome OS are always downloaded and installed in the background to a second redundant partition of firmware and the SSD storage.
For example, lets say that your Chromebook is currently booted from "A" partition of firmware, kernel, and root file system. The Chrome OS update engine will download the next version directly to the "B" partitions of firmware, kernel, and root file system.
Then, when it comes time to update, all the user has to do is reboot the system, and the boot process gets flipped over to "B" instead of "A"
Nowhere do you have to jump to a separate "OTA install" or "Recovery image" step like Android or iOS to install a normal update. The first time it boots into a new OS image it should boot at the same speed as any other boot.
This also adds redundancy. If for some reason the update is corrupted and the "B" partition fails to boot, the system has a failsafe : It can always fall back and boot to "A" which was a known good OS.
Edit: more info here : https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/filesystem-autoupdate
Cannot really say which project I saw had the best code. After all, it's rarely that you are struck with lighting of wow, this is amazing!. Usually there is a lot of solid parts, a lot of less solid and once in a while some nice trick that make some particular thing easier. But code filled with nice tricks only would be a horror.
I guess that libchrome would be a candidate, but not because I found some ingenious code piece, but because of overall high standards of code - I simply didn't found there any part that would make me unhappy to work with.
It's easier to point guy who was the best programmer I met. Fellow student, one year older than me. He graduated university magna cum laude, even though last 2-3 year of studies he worked (and excelled there). Each time I asked him about something he either pointed me in right direction or (if there was deadline and we had no time to play around), he typed solution explaining it to me so fast I could hardly follow him. And besides having both great theoretical and practical background, he was very slim, because he regularly trained. On top of that, he was a nice guy, far from being self righteous asshole like many people with same amount of skills.
The main part of the operating system (root file system) is stored in 2 separate partitions, one in current use, one as as backup. The auto-updater updates the backup partition to any new version, and them marks that as bootable for the next reboot. If the reboot is successful the updated partition becomes the new main boot partition, and the current boot partition becomes the backup partition.
Reference: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/filesystem-autoupdate
Yes, they're called 'libwidevinecdm.so' and 'libwidevinecdmadapter.so' you can get armv7 (hardfloat) versions from google themselves! Use the chromebook 'create recovery' script and download the 'peach' firmware.
The firmware is saved to some folder in /tmp and you can unzip it to get the full image. (which is just a full chrome os image with a GPT header)
You want to mount ROOT-A and go to ${ROOT-A}/opt/google/chrome/ There, you will find the armv7 widevine DRM for Chrome's Pepper API. No, they're not NPAPI, but I've used them before with chrome to watch netflix on an ODROID-C1 single board computer.
EDIT: If you don't want to compile chromium yourself, you can try just running ${ROOT-A}/opt/google/chrome (I've been told that works)
Chrome OS does support updating the kernel. In fact, technically a new kernel image is used every time Chrome OS updates. It's Google that's choosing not to update the kernel for some reason.
It's interesting that perhaps this might be the vessel for the new Andromeda OS that will be "backwards compatible" with Android Apps.
Take a look at Chrome OS and how Google enforces them. Google has final say in every single ChromeOS release. On their firmware page:
> The Chrome OS firmware is always verified as signed by Google
Google has the final say. Right now, any OEM can customize Android to their liking. Andromeda might stop all that.
"virus-free" is impossible by the means of nowadays complex software. however, security plays an important role since of the beginning of ChromeOS.
there are several techniques applied on different layers in order to make it as hard as possible for an attacker to take over a machine: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-overview
but the pwnium contest for example shows that is still possible to break into such system albeit all those measurements.
I don't have any numbers to back up this claim here, but I would say in terms of security ChromeOS > MacOS > Windows, which is exactly the inverse of the distribution of each system. not a coincidence (an attacker is interested into targeting a wider audience)
Yes, type C needs pull-up resistors to signal how much power to allow.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/cable-and-adapter-tips-and-tricks
I believe the adapter in this case is essentially using usb-A signaling over usb-C physical plug, whereas the usb-C cable is a true usb-C cable that’s not supported by this non-compliant device. The device is essentially implementing a “dumb” USB port that happens to have a usb-C plug on it.
Disclaimer: I’m not an expert and there are many in this sub more knowledgeable than I am, so if someone else contradicts me they’re probably right.
The difference being, I didn't pay $1700 for plastic straws and Google said we'd get kernel upstream patches:
>Upgrades
>The kernel will be upgraded to a new version as soon as practical after a new version of the upstream kernel is released. We will do this via a Git rebase, this means we'll keep clean versions of our patches floated on top of the latest tree. In practice, this will happen approximately every 3-6 months, and approximately every other kernel versions from upstream. Other, smaller updates will be done on a continuous basis, such as merging in the -stable kernel updates.
>All third-party vendors are expected to supply updated versions of their code against every new mainline kernel version (for example, at 3.2, 3.3, and so on) within 14 days of its release, if the code is not already upstream.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/chromium-os-kernel#TOC-Upgrades
A x86 CPU, and an Intel Broadwell i7 being stuck on older kernel is just non existent is any standard computing scene, be it Windows, Mac, or another Linux distribution. This point of ChromeOS kernel was to avoid the trappings of the third-party vendor proprietary binaries.
Here's the source on the Qualcomm/Snapdragon roadblock.
https://9to5google.com/2016/12/24/why-chromebooks-dont-use-qualcomm/
You can't. ChromeOS isn't free and isn't sold separately from ChromeBooks.
You can download Chromium, which is the open source version. It's somewhat the same, minus all the Google proprietary bits.
This is what the last part of the sentence means. Chromium OS (and Chrome OS by extension, since they share the exact same kernels) has a strict Upstream First policy : https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/upstream-first
Upstream First requires a lot more work, but it also means that you are less likely to have an abandoned kernel for a 2 or 3 year old SoC that no one will ever look at again or look for bug fixes or port security patches back to because they are all too busy working on the next next next SoC in the pipeline on yet another non-upstream kernel.
> ChromeOS is basically a browser wrapper over a minimalist linux kernel/OS. Updating it doesn’t take much time because there isn’t much to adjust besides the actual data changed.
this has no bearing on the speed of updates. Updates are near instantaneous because the updated kernel/OS are installed to their own partitions, and upon reboot the firmware just switches which partitions are used for boot.
see: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/filesystem-autoupdate
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices Per this link. Asus Flip C100 is on 3.18. Also interesting to note. It sounds like this is due to come on Samsung CB+, it is on 4.4. However, Samsung CBpro is on 3.18. If Linux support is truly going to require Linux Kernel version 4.4 and up. There's gonna be lots of sad CBpro and Asus C302 owners.
"Software as a Service"; the idea is that ChromeOS is a thin platform that isn't designed to support a real native software ecosystem, just enough to let you consume Google's cloud offerings.
The ChromeOS security model prevents persistent compromises of the OS by ensuring that the entire userland is small enough to be cryptographically verified at boot: the firmware verifies the kernel, then the kernel verifies the userland. More here.
Yes, it will. It's called Dark Resume:
On some systems, powerd passes a duration to the kernel in order to periodically wake the system from the S3 state. This results in an awake-with-the-display-off-and-audio-muted mode referred to as "dark resume". After the system wakes into dark resume, powerd checks the battery level. If it is low enough to suggest that the battery will be drained entirely while in S3, resulting in a system that can't be used until it's recharged, powerd shuts down the system. Otherwise, it re-suspends immediately.
For those of you that might be looking, here is a list of Chromebooks compatible with Android apps and what channel you need to be on to get them.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
The processor variation doesn't determine that, the OS build does. Thinkpad 13's are all built on the Sentry build version. Sentry has Dev channel access, regardless of processor choice.
See here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
Meh.
The correct way is to get the handle first, check it, and only if valid, construct HandleWrapper with it.
handle h = create_mutex(...) if (!valid_handle(h)) bail_out_with_error(...); HandleWrapper w(h); // ...
Honestly... What is the point of having an "empty" HandleWrapper? What is the point of it having IsHandleInvalid? It's just 80's-style coding...
Which let me to google "chromium exceptions", and I stumbled across this:
OK, this is really not cool... If g() is a C function, then h() must never, ever throw an exception to g(), what kind of reasoning is that? C language has a different model of execution, you can never put "throwing" code in C code and expect it to work. For example, this doesn't satisfy basic exception safety and no amount of compiling with exception support can save it, it has to be C++ code to avoid the error:
void g() { resource r = allocate_resource(); h(); // whatever(); free_resource(r); }
It is completely irrelevant whether g is compiled with exception support or not.
Sort of. You can get Chromium OS which is the open-source version. I don't recall the differences, but remember not having Flash (though you can get it to work) and a few other things.
If you just want to see how it feels, you can get ready builds from here and follow the instructions from here.
Gutted looks like my Dell Chromebook 13 i5 won't get this as it's 3.14 but does support VX-i
Looks like there are a few Chromebooks with that kernel according to https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
At a quick glance all Broadwell chipsets have 3.14 currently.
A USB Type C port can optionally output anywhere from 5V to 20V. I've used this portable monitor with my laptop and it works fine with just 5V from the laptop.
If you want to figure out the capabilities of your port, you can get one of these USB PD sniffers and inject a sourcecap packet, which will return a list of voltages and currents the port supports (if it supports any at all).
It's likely that the laptop only supports 5V. It might be documented in the manual.
> There's some sort of snap-on connector just above the heatsink on the right, and I'm really curious what that could be used for.
That is the standard Chromebook debug connector ("Servo"). They have released schematics and stuff for it in case you want to hook up to it.
I'm surprised that yours is populated, though, usually they have to be soldered on separately (although I think there have been previous exceptions like the Pixel 2). Did you get a pre-release unit?
Chromium is also an OS. ChromeOS is the operating system that google makes optimized hardware for. ChromiumOS is the open-source project that shouldn't be used by the average consumer (so they say).
Those are some great questions.
See this site for background info and details
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
Security was the MAJOR design goal - in the 10 years that ChromeOS has been available, there has not been a single instance of a Chromebook being hacked or infected by a virus. Not one! No other operating system can provide that. Android certainly can't.
There are many other design goals discusses on that website. Over the years, ChromeOS has become much more complex. You can now run Linux and Android apps within ChromeOS. But it is still as secure as it has always been.
Read about it and I think you will get a much better understanding of "why ChromeOS".
Those LEDs are controlled by the EC (embedded controller) [1]. The following assumes you have your Pixelbook in dev-mode and you know what that is. If not, let me know :)
There is a userland command line tool called ectool. You can use it by CTRL+ALT+T -> get a crosh window -> type shell -> sudo /usr/sbin/ectool help. Unfortunately the help text is not very accurate, so help yourself by reading the source code a bit [2] [3].
Example:
> set left LED to red > > sudo /usr/sbin/ectool led left red
if that works, it's a good sign. I suggest to do the following anyway:
> sudo /usr/sbin/ectool reboot_ec
this will initiate a reboot of the EC and your Pixelbook. That should restore the default behavior of your LEDs.
Note that turning off your Pixelbook doesn't necessarily turn off the EC, as it's a separate chip in your laptop.
Your CB3 is running a 3.18 kernel according to: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices That suggests you may get Crostini about the same time that the Pro does as commits suggest a backport is underway for the 3.18 kernel.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
Here's a list of devices that support android apps, there is one asus chromebit that has android apps as "planned". Controllers should work for some android games but not all
Chrome OS has stricter rules when it comes to open source projects.
Specifically, Upstream First : https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/upstream-first
It's not good enough that the kernels used on the devices be released to open source in a big dump when a device is released (ala Android releases containing Qualcomm's kernels).
All of the code in Chromium OS kernels have to be picked from maintainer's tree's or Linus's tree so there is high confidence that if there are important fixes discovered in the broader community (say, a critical security fix) that they can be quickly incorporated into the Chromium OS kernels and deployed ASAP.
Apparently iPerf is available in Chrome OS when running a test build in developer mode. Maybe that could be an option for you :)
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/debugging-3g
It is, really. ChromeOS is a fully-fledged Linux-based operating system. Originally Google had forked Ubuntu (as that's what they use internally on most of their desktops/laptops), but in the end they based it on Gentoo.
You can download the source code from the official open source project website.
Then your Chromebook does not support Android apps. You can check this list to see if/when it will get Android app support:
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
I love it. I've been using Chrome OS for like 7 years now, so my whole workflow works pretty well with the Chromebox. They're great if you don't play games or anything, especially if you're comfortable enough to throw it into developer mode and install Ubuntu (it's pretty easy, but compromises a bit of the security Chrome OS is known for).
Mine is the Chromebox 2 (aka the CN62). I upgraded from the ASUS Chromebox 1 after this one was said to be getting Android App support, like, 2 years ago (still waiting on that).
- Intel Celeron 3205U / 1.5 GHz, dual core
- 128 GB SSD storage (upgraded from 16 GB, I think)
- 10 GB DDR3 RAM (upgraded from 2 GB)
- 1 display-port, 1 HDMI, 1 gigabit ethernet, 2 front 3.0 USB, 2 back 3.0 USB, 1 power, 1 SD card slot, 1 headphone
- 5 x 5 x 2 inches, 1.33 pounds
This question gets asked all the time so you could have saved yourself a bit of time by a simple search.
No you cannot.
If you want the details as to why not (and why there is nothing you can do about it) read this https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/verified-boot.
Wow, nice deal.
It seems like your decide is indeed planned to get apps. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
I don't think there's a way to speed it up though. Gallium won't give you android apps.
You could put Linux on it if you want a more full featured machine.
Warning: From the developer wiki (this is for the Pixel 2015, but many devices have a similar disclaimer)
> An unrelated note: Holding just Refresh and poking the Power button hard-resets the machine without entering Recovery. That's occasionally useful, but use it with care - it doesn't sync the disk or shut down politely, so there's a nonzero chance of trashing the contents of your stateful partition.)
I suspect that the ctrl, shift, and alt keys are doing nothing. I believe you're just hard-resetting the machine without shutting it down properly.
I believe there is a package manager called portage, accessible through shell. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/packages/portage
You could also try Chromebrew, but your mileage may vary. It originally used dropbox links for the packages, but seems to have mostly switched to freedesktop ftps now.
Chrome OS uses source code from Chromium OS. The actual Chrome OS is just Chromium OS with proprietary things like Android application support and a list of other things documented here
The result is that Chromium OS is fully open source while Chrome OS is proprietary, but arguably open source at the same time
These Chromebooks will all be based on the "volteer" reference design.
Not many of these have been revealed yet. The only one I remember off the top of my head is the ASUS Chromebook CX9 (there are others as well, I just don't remember them right now).
Keep checking the Chrome OS device list and search for "volteer". They aren't listed there yet, but they will be eventually.
ChromeOS (well, ChromiumOS) is for the most part open source. We invite all kind of developers to hack around it and contribute code as much as possible and we're more than happy to see people get into this kind of stuff.
If you want to get started on learning how ChromiumOS works and maybe even hack around and contribute code yourself, I think your best bet is to start with the official Developer Guide or just the ChromiumOS Project Page. It's not easy and I know there's quite a lot of stuff, but it's probably your best bet.
...or to only install precompiled binaries if your name is Google and you are making Chrome OS https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/packages/portage
This lists chromebooks in order of release
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
This will give you a clue about the later models with longest support life.
according to the chromium dev page this was the only machine based on the samus board and was released in March of 2015 78 months from March 2015 would be October of 2021. Does anybody know why it's slated for 6/20?
You are on 3.14.
There is probably a better way to do it, but I just went to the list of spectre/meltdown vulnerable Chrome OS devices and searched for my model.
The Acer Spin 11 is a decent little machine from what I looked at online for that cost. If you can handle the 11 inch screen, then it should fit the bill for you. It would be a bit more expensive for similar models with 13 or larger screens that are touch with a folding body and similar specs. According to the official pages, the Spin 11 supports Android apps in the stable channel (out of the box). The list of devices is at https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
Per Google - Find Your Chromebook and Chromium - Chrome OS Systems Supporting Android Apps, all the convertibles can run android applications.
I don't know what level/type of school work you'll be doing, so I would hesitate to suggest for engineering/drafting/art/etc. For non-sketching or particularly heavy applications (i.e. office suite), a Chromebook is probably capable. I would also hesitate if your courses would require a specific software which may not support ChromeOS.
If it's the HP Chromebook 14 G4, it's not supported yet. It may be in the future. It may not be.
The G5 model is supported. Which is yours?
Here's the list https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps.
Don't be so lazy lol what a shortpost for being so uninformed
Seriously do you have some defect that makes you act weirdly confrontational for no reason or did your mom just make your pop tarts wrong today?
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
The redirection is done by the device so you have no control over the error being displayed. Samsung's in particular are the worst offenders for this and it's something we've seen with our own captive portal.
Most devices will try and retrieve a URL first to see if they have internet connectivity and if they need to go into captive portal mode. For example Android Kit kat uses clients3.google.com whereas appla has used http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html in the past. Different Android versions and iOS versions use many different URLs to check.
Different error codes from the URL then tell the device what mode it should be in. You can find out more about the android proces here https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/network-portal-detection
You can try whitelisting the URLs but it only means that users have to manually visit the URL of your captive portal or another non HSTS protected site such as www.sky.com
Yeah not sure why it's taking them so long since other x86 Chromebooks have Android App already. The Toshibas don't even have it available in the beta or developer branch, still says it's "planned".
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
>The whole damn point of the chromebook was cheap computing.
No it isn't. ChromeOS was always meant to be for "normal users" and for developers. It's in their original design doc from 2009.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/developer-mode
> Google Chrome OS devices must be:
> Secure - users must be protected from attackers. This protection should reasonably extend to inexperienced or naive users.
> Open - developers must be able to install their own builds of a Chromium-based OS, or another operating system (e.g., Ubuntu). Developers should not be significantly impaired from using the full capabilities of the device.
The Pixelbook is clearly meant more for developers than normal users, and there's nothing wrong about a device that leans more to one side.
If you don't mind putting your Chromebook in developer mode, you can use Chromebrew. It lets you easily install both Git and a ton of other programming tools. IME it's almost never failed (well, there was the time I ran out of disk space and crashed my file system, but that's another story...).
Just follow these steps to be able to get to a shell, and run the commands on the Chromebrew website.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
From there, it's listing the C100 as stable for the store.
Thanks for your input on this. I'm working with some vendors now to pull up our best options. Much appreciated for bringing me back to reality.
Try reading this link
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/openvpn-manual-setup
I used to run a Openvpn server from home on a Raspberry Pi and following the instructions in the link I managed to get it working. Here is another link with a ONC generator creater by Charles-Erick Tremblay which made the process easier.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-os-discuss/p9EQgAaeUXE
You could compile and install Chromium OS on it. Better though, would be just to reinstall Windows or, the easiest and the best way, switch to Linux - choices are many.
I did it for my university's VPN and I have to tell you it was incredibly complicated. Now that it's set up though it works flawlessly and is very well integrated into ChromeOS!
My starting point was the document that is linked here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/openvpn-manual-setup . Maybe that's enough for you. I had to look through the actual documentation to find all the necessary settings: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/components/onc/docs/onc_spec.md . This documentation will definitely contain all necessary information but it's a bit tedious to read.
The 'immediate' case is where the OS detects via its own mechanism that it is behind a captive portal. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/network-portal-detection describes one mechanism for doing this.
Laptops ain't cheap. Like I said, they are designed to be mass bought or be cheap and shitty. Most of the "google ecosystem" can be accessed online. This INCLUDES google drive. Buying a cheap REAL laptop is a better idea.
Then, if you REALLY need a chrome-like OS for some reason, try Chromium OS.
Besides, if all you're doing is non-local storage and basic cloud stuff-- why do you need an i3? Plus an SSD seems overkill if you don't even use local storage.
Most chromebooks are also small enough that the PPI is near that of 1080p, just a smaller screen; for instance, 4k on a desktop makes more sense than 4k on a phone. (Although viewing distance varies a bit.)
The vents at the top are definitely for a fan.
It does have space, just like laptops and some tablets (like the Microsoft Surface Pro series). For examples of what these look like on the inside, you can look at just about any teardown, like XPS 13, Surface Pro 3, or Chromebook C720
If you've only built stuff like desktops, you might expect that fans are large and face toward the exterior vent, but they can be smaller and perpendicular as long as the exhaust has a path to the vent.
I'm basing my security assessment on this thing from the crouton documentation wiki:
https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/wiki/Security
And this page from the Chromium wiki:
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/developer-mode#TOC-Introduction
I guess the crouton documentation is correct: it's not any less secure than a well-configured Linux distro, especially if it's shut down instead of suspended. I just don't like the idea of opening up more attack vectors than I have to, even though I'm not exactly doing sensitive journalism—I'm writing about basketball.
Honestly, the only other issue for me (and it's extremely minor, but just annoying enough) is having to see the big warning and the Ctrl-D every time, but AFAIK there's no way to disable it without reflashing coreboot, and that makes me nervous. I like the idea of using the thing without Developer Mode "the way God intended." (Google is God in this scenario, which... isn't that far from true I guess.)
Same boat. I use my phone and smart lock. Now I just open my phone with my fingerprint and it will authenticate my pixel.
Edit: You can also add in 2 factor security using an app, a text or a yubikey like device.
The only thing I'd loose is the data on my sd card as some of it is unencrypted. It would be a nice feature to have the same encryption on my home partition applied to my sd card natively.
There are some papers outlining the detailed security baked into ChromeOS. It's pretty damn robust so long as you don't put it into dev mode.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-overview
I would recommend Chrome since Google does extra hardening1 to protect against flash based attacks. Plus updating chrome updates flash at the same time which is simpler.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/protecting-cached-user-data
"In a nutshell, each user gets a unique “vault” directory and keyset that is created at her first login. The vault is used as the underlying encrypted storage for her data. The keyset is tied to her login credentials and is required to allow the system to both retrieve and store information in the vault. The vault is opened transparently to the user at login. On logout or reboot, the user's data is locked away again."
If you don't mind pressing ctrl + L on a cold boot you don't have to do anything to the bios flags or the screw. Ubuntu will suspend instead of shutdown by default so you rarely have to worry about it.
Don't mess with the bios flags or the screw. Run this instead: sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 dev_boot_legacy=1
Press ctrl + L on startup to boot installation USB. It will only boot from the USB 2.0 port.
Search this subreddit for threads about installing Windows. There have been a few, which I haven't read too closely, but you might find something useful there.
Regarding Legacy Boot, the most thorough instructions are here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/acer-c720-chromebook
If you're interested in hearing about possible alternatives to Windows software, let us know what your needs are -- we might be able to suggest Linux equivalents.
There is also WINE and VirtualBox for emulating Windows, if nothing else satisfies and you have adequate RAM. If your Windows needs can be pared down to occasional, you might be able to use Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, and Remote Desktop into remote servers? This can work well for some uses.
The RPi doesn't have a traditional BIOS but relies on boot stages instead. The first boot stage (bootcode.bin) is hardcoded directly into the IC.
Chromebooks, on the other hand, use open-source BIOS based on either Coreboot or U-Boot.
In 2015 I was a home grown Google Play developer, and bought this Chromebook for a lot of money on British Amazon. Google promised to add Android support to it "soon". In the meantime they stopped supporting it at all, but Android support on Asus C201PA is still planned. :)
I get the feeling there's something very fundamental that authors of these topics, and even most folks with depth in Linux forget the two largest distros in users hands:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/sandboxing.md
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/chromium-os-cgroups
*Androids sandbox has been garbage for a while, but it is benefiting from general improvements to the kernel.
The idea is you don't. Yes it is stupid, Google made it very clear that Chrome OS devices are NOT designed to be general-purpose PCs like your Windows or Linux computers: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
However, if you really want to use an alternative browser with native performance, and that you are willing to enable dev mode and live with all its consequences, and that you have good Linux experience, then you can install Crouton and setup a complete Linux distro that runs natively on your Chrome OS device, and run whatever browser natively in that, I've tried both Firefox and Chrome and they both work fine, although I had to change some stuff to get hardware accelerated video decoding to work at least in Firefox but I believe it depends on your specific setup and choice of distro in Crouton.
You should also get very good performance running an Android browser. The Android subsystem on most Chrome OS devices runs inside just a container and there's no VM involved, so you get much better performance than running stuff inside Crostini. If you can get an Android browser to work the way you want, that is. I think you can try Kiwi browser, it is a fork of Chromium and it supports most of the desktop Chrome extensions, and you can set it to open all webpages in desktop view by default.
Developer mode provides root access and theoretically allows installing/changing everything (eg new kernel). It’s more work though.
This is great; thank you for linking to it.
<em>Protecting Cached User Data: Appendix A: Formal requirements</em>
> Appendix A: Formal requirements > > The primary objective is to protect sensitive end user data from exposure if the device or drive is lost. > > * User data MUST NOT be accessible when the device is powered down. > * User data MUST be protected when the disk has been removed from a device. > * User data MAY be protected when the device is suspended. > * Google Accounts passphrases MUST NOT be exposed for direct offline attack. > * User data MUST be available during offline login. > * User data MUST be recoverable after an out-of-band password change. > * User data MUST NOT be exposed across users on a multiuser device. > * User data swapped out of memory MAY BE protected (depending on the requirement below). > * Power and performance overhead SHOULD BE minimized. (Some concrete maximum acceptable overhead should be determined. It may end up being device specific, however. In particular, boot time, login time, and Chromium browser responsiveness issues are important.) > * Users MUST NOT be able to opt out of encryption. > > Non-goals: > * Offline credential storage behavior may be a side effect of the chosen implementation. > * A TPM device may be used, but it is a non-goal to create a TPM-dependent solution. > * Root partition encryption/protection is not a goal. > * It is a non-goal to provide a remote wipe mechanism via this feature, but it may make such a design easier.
Yup, that's correct. Many of the projects we depend on are GPL'd, for example, the Linux kernel.
However, a choice that our team makes is that we adopted an "Upstream First" policy. Wherever possible, we don't just fork and do our own changes on top of what we get from the open-source community. We contribute back major features and fixes that benefit others, and we insist on our vendor partners do the same to work with us. Over the years, this has meant that we've encouraged big silicon vendors like Intel to be better open-source citizens.
are you sure you want to do chrome OS? it is more complicated than most Linux distros so just beware. anyways developer documentation is available under "chromium os" here is the landing page best of luck!
are you serious?
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/asus-chromebox
https://kodi.wiki/view/Archive:Chromebox#Put_in_Developer_Mode
https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1044169/
every Chromebox since 2014 uses a physical recovery button, the reason being that the keyboard is not a part of the device and cannot be a reliable indicator of physical ownership of the device (like it would on a Chromebook)
Get a refurb machine off eBay.
I picked up a refurb Asus 302 for less than $250 as a trial machine. I've been using it daily for over a year while my Windows laptop collects dust. I've used most laptop brands over the years, and I personally think Asus' machines have the best keyboards out there for coding.
As for Linux support, you can see the older machines that support Linux here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-linux
Mine doesn't support Linux, so I've been using AWS Cloud9 for my dev work.
USB debugging is only supported on certain models. Debugging through Crostini is supposed to have replaced it.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-adb-debugging-over-usb
afaik that cable is also available directly on sparkfun's website I tried with a random address in Astana it proposed me shipping with the lowest one being around 5 $
on aliexpress I found (by searching "CAB-14746") an article with the picture of that cable but it seems they are selling some chips and not the actual cable so the sparkfun website is more reliable I think
concerning the guides
https://wiki.mrchromebox.tech/Firmware_Write_Protect#Hardware_Write_Protection
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/firmware-porting-guide/firmware-ec-write-protection
I can't help you more than that since I'm not familiar with this method.
If that is indeed the ID/CC pin, you would connect it through a 56 kOhm resister to VCC.
As u/mrchromebox said, that model is not able to get Play Store. It's shown as "Planned" on this web page
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
You are either misremembering, or the motherboard was changed out with the wrong model, or you have mixed up devices, or something. Whatever the reason, it won't work.
Check this list:
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
There's 4 Acers "planned" to get Android Apps, but I have doubts they ever will.
There's custom OS's that might get you Android apps, check /r/chrultrabook
Besides the privacy concerns, google.com doesn't respond with a known response - it could change to all kinds of things, whereas a good "captive portal" check returns an exact known response such as "OK" or similar.
Google does operate such a domain with the URL clients3.google.com/generate_204 which is documented here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/network-portal-detection
Apple and Microsoft also operate similar domains.
Since KDE is open source it probably wouldn't be too hard to submit a change that allowed for configurable captive portal URLs and then the user could choose where they want to leak their privacy details to.
That's through Crouton, though. You still need to boot ChromeOS in order to use a Linux (or BSD), at least I think that's how it works.
Someone who has used Crouton can chime in.
I also just found out about going inside a Chromebook to remove the write protection screw, though I've never used Chromebooks, so I'm not sure if it works on every Chromebook out there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/2yt2id/is_there_a_way_to_completely_replace_chromeos/
poppy is x2, slate and samsung plus V2
Useful link for all the board names:
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
It's probably the single biggest weakness of ChromeOS devices. When I'm selecting one for myself or one for work, I always try to get one based on a brand new platform that has at least five and a half years left in it.
One thing to be aware of, too: it's not from the release date of a particular device, but of the platform that device is based on. Google and their hardware partners release only a limited number of platforms each year, and many devices are based on the same platform. For example, the educational-targeted ChromeOS tablets from Asus, CTL, and Acer are all based on the same hardware platform.
I can see the argument for only maintaining a limited set of these at any given time and not wanting to get overextended, but at the same time, I wish they'd push it out a bit longer, at least another year and a half to 8 years. In spite of the moderate amount of additional complexity, I could even see having a sort of price-based split. As we get more expensive Chromebooks intended as primary computers for businesspeople and even (Google hopes) developers, that countdown starts to feel a bit limiting.
(Each platform consists of a set of hardware, like CPU, wireless card, and other specific hardware. That limits the hardware combinations that have to be tested and maintained, making it easier to keep up with their 6-ish week release schedule. You can see a list on the Chromium OS wiki.)
I believe you chromebook C330 is built with "hana" (codename) board - which has the problem with linux already documented.
see the url below
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
Not totally sure but it sounds like it might be "lucid sleep". I don't know what it has to do with tablet vs laptop mode though.
In Developer Mode you can enable ssh access to Chrome OS, it's one of the Debugging Features available on the OOBE screen.
Even with that enabled I'm not sure you'll be able to automate anything in a python script.
Yes, it's possible. You'll need to switch to developer mode and set some flags (I forget what they are).
There's an older guide on chromium.org that might help get you started on the custom build.
For those who want to read the design doc on the subject:
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/protecting-cached-user-data
There are several versions of the HP Chromebook 14. See https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps for a list of which do support Android apps but I strongly suspect yours is not one of them.
$75 for a working computer is pretty cheap and although it may not support Android apps, it will still be useful and that is more than you can say for most computers this cheap.
The official docs say that "There are no plans to support devices running Linux 3.10 or older."
The C740, unfortunately, has 3.8.
detailed info here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
and you can watch for your device to appear here:
There was a post a couple of days ago from /u/cygnus8595 talking about this.
Check here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices
for which version of the Linux kernel your Chrome device is running.
Those with a 4.4 kernel will/may get Crostini first. The Samsung CB Plus was the second to get Crostini (beta) after the Pixelbook. Other 4.4 kernels may be next in line.
3.18 kernel willl/may follow. Google has to backport support for Crostini
3.14 kernels will/may also follow but it is also subject to backport
According to Google the "Chromebook 2 11" - XE500C12" is planned to get the Play Store, but it's not available on the dev or beta channel yet.
So the short answer is no, not yet.
Yea, confusing to me. In one of my other posts, I mentioned how my used eBay Dell Chromebook 11 currently has a kernel of 4.4.111 (dated April of 2018!), even though it was originally shipped/manufactured in June, 2016. Somewhere along the line Google has bumped up the kernel from its original version!
UPDATE: Your idea of kernel version number being dependent on chipset has merit. Looking at the chart (https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices) and sorting by 'Platform' shows a clear pattern: all (?) of the Chrome devices of the same platform have the same kernel version. So, at some point (for example) the 'BayTrail' Chrome devices had kernel 3.10.18, but now they all have 4.4 -- at least that is what it looks like to me. Theory: Google occasionally upgrades the ChromeOS kernel version for all devices sharing the same platform at the same time.
According to the list (https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices), the R11 uses kernel 3.18 -- which is disappointing to me. Am I mistaken?
Instructions to enable Developer Mode on the ThinkPad X131e Chromebook are available here.