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no one discuss chromebook with Rk3288?


ning

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recent days I find Chromebook may be better Arm devices with laptop form factor.

compare with Pinebook pro, Chromebooks are cheaper, and mass product, and better tested.

 

why no much people discuss how to install 3rd OS to its internal emmc, or reflash its uboot?

 

I have searched on ArchArm forum, only 1 topic.

 

but there actually a way to reflash uboot, and mainline uboot already has support for arm based chromebooks.

 

It should be easy, but why no discussion?

 

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in case you already have one and want to get started, this is a bootable sd card image working on some rk3288 chromebooks: https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/releases/tag/200526-01 - maybe you can use it as a starting point for a proper armbian port (the image is just plain debian/ubuntu and not armbian)

 

some more relevant info about getting linux working or making it nicer on such chromebooks:

https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/tree/master/files/chromebook-boot

https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/blob/master/boot/boot-chromebook_veyron-armv7l/chromebook-boot/cbr.dd-secondary-gpt.readme

https://github.com/hexdump0815/u-boot-chainloading-for-arm-chromebooks

https://github.com/hexdump0815/linux-mainline-and-mali-generic-stable-kernel/blob/master/readme.cbr

 

best wishes - hexdump

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no - you can install to internal emmc just fine too and you can even get rid of the chromeos boot screen ... i run my snow and veyron chromebooks this way and they run quite well :) ... the images are just to have an easy starting point for others who want to play around with linux on this hardware as its much easier to do all the preparations for an emmc install from a running linux system instead from chromeos and its also handy to have a working sd card linux system around in case one breaks the emmc install ... i decided for chainloading u-boot for booting as trying to install a new low level boot loader is a lot of hassle and you can really brick the device

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what is the big problem with the spi flash? if you flash a chainloaded u-boot instead of the chromeos kernel it can be used just normally using that mainline u-boot using regular gpt partitions etc. ... another reason might the the blob character of the early boot stages, but i would say half of the armbian supported systems need some kind of blob (scp firmware, memory initialization etc.) for booting

 

best wishes - hexdump

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I have no problem with SPI flash when it doesnt require me to take extra steps to get basic functionality.  I'm just not sure why you can't just load the u-boot preloader directly into flash and forget about tapdancing around all the chromebook knock off u-boot stuff.

 

If yanking it works though (it should, really), that's probably what I'll do, I have the tools to do it and keep the SPI in case I need it.

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that one is not really armbian - but you can try it as a start - not sure if it will boot out of the box on an asus c100pa, but with some dtb trying/tweaking it might work ... it works for me on a medion s2013 chromebook ... in case you get it booting, do not expect wlan etc. to work out of the box for sure

 

good luck and best wishes - hexdump

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bumping and resurrecting old thread.

Looks like there is an interest to use chromebooks with linux, but most people face problems with fine tuning kernel to given hardware. I will try out hexdump's image on flip c100, and I hope this will be the first one kernel with bluetooth support for c100.

Anyway if there are any news about c100 - feel free to share. I don't expect any sudden release of armbian for c100, but any suggestions how to make hardware working better with mainline kernel will be more than welcome.

 

humble Armbian user on Tinkerboard

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maybe look at galliumOS for chromebooks. Being battery powered devices you likely want video hw acceleration and battery friendly tweaks, for rk3399 some work for chromebooks was leveraged for wider community. The other thing is trackpad support which is notoriously bad in linux, galliumOS uses original ChromeOS drivers.  Has XFCE Xubuntu desktop

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@ScottPthere are couple of sources for arm chromebooks, which partially support rk3288 hardware, I think there is still to come with mainline kernel 5.x if finally it will support remaining rockchip features (like mpp etc) and stabilize panfrost driver. Others obstacles were removed, and c100 (and some other chromebooks too) can work pretty well.

I even could imagine some support for c100 from armbian - even as CSC, because most problems were resolved along with other 3288 issues on other boards. It's just the matter of finding interested people and basic testing.

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