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The "Linux questions (and other stuff)" thread

Just confirmed, KDE DOES work on the Chromebook via ChrUbuntu.



No, this is not a Mac, i just like the theme.

So far the only OS other than ChromeOS and which can take advantage of dev mode scripts is ChrUbuntu for max compatibility. so far all the how-tos are for Ubuntu itself. although Unity is a bit large for a CB.

Seems to be something to do with Google's 'protected' BIOS. a form of UEFI booting. you have to disable that to get into Dev mode (and it gives you a warning screen on every boot too that you cannot disable) and then you enter in some console stuff while still in ChromeOS, which script-based installs an unattended install of ChrUbuntu, a variant of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. then when you reboot it defaults first to the Ubuntu variant, but if you reboot without first issuing a few commands to make it the default, you'll go back to ChromeOS, and have to start over again. someone else, of course, after i got mine all set up, has made a better how-to involving Crouton which is a better dual-boot if you want both OSs in there.

As for the no swap space, with computers today having tons of RAM (upwards of a few gigs to a few dozen gigs) Swap seems redundant. it might have made sense when computers still had 8MB of RAM but today it is a waste of time and hard drive space, especially on a limited SSD. everytime it hit the swap space, it just slowed the machine down to an unusable state. without swap, the kernel kills tasks similary to Android in a low-memory situation. however, i've never gone over 25% of my Chromebook's RAM so far. and that is with tons of tabs open and Google Chrome running 24/7 with tons to spare.
 
Swap, nowadays, is good for hibernation, and that's it (as far as I am concerned, anyway), which is why I have the same size swap as my available RAM.

Of course, I am running a traditional SATA drive, so I am not worried about abusing an SSD.

Moody, do you have rotating cube in that Kubuntu? It is running Plasma?

I'm thinking maybe I could build a virtual machine and tweak KDE at my leisure before going for a full install.
 
Gah! I do like that rotating cube... :rolleyes:

Maybe I will take another stab at it. I can install Plasma as an alternate desktop in Mint... finding time to work on it right now, though-- between school, work, and the family schedules-- but then, there is no real hurry, either.
 
palmtree5 said:
Switching back to Arch. Can't put up with Ubuntu and its error reports for much longer...
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WHAT error reports? WTF is it that other people see, or have problems with, with *buntu that I don't? :confused:

My Kubuntu boxes/laptops just hum away, year after year, no problems, no errors, no intrusive and/or info sharing 'features' I don't want, no restrictions on doing whatever *I* want to do on/with my computers, etc.

Someone, please clue me in!
 
MoodyBlues said:
WHAT error reports? WTF is it that other people see, or have problems with, with *buntu that I don't? :confused:

My Kubuntu boxes/laptops just hum away, year after year, no problems, no errors, no intrusive and/or info sharing 'features' I don't want, no restrictions on doing whatever *I* want to do on/with my computers, etc.

Someone, please clue me in!
Click to expand...

There were a number of problems that Ubuntu would report, for various reasons... it's been a while since I messed around with it, but turning off error-reports was high on my to-do list.

Even when you broke something, intentional or not, it wanted to generate an error report, very similar to Microsoft's method of madness.
 
i see tons of parallels with Microsoft regarding Ubuntu. from error reporting, to crash protection (Windows problem reports/solutions), to random rebooting after updates (automatic updates) to various others. thankfully, it can be turned off.

one glitch i'm still trying to iron out at this time is the random (out of nowhere) issue where Chrome goes into an endless loop and chews through 100% CPU until it panics and forces a shutdown all on its own. when my machine boots up, i see
this screen saying 'invalid iomem size, you might experience problems' and when i go into suspend, it says something about CPU package power limit notification. is this something i should be worried about?
 
nickdalzell said:
i see tons of parallels with Microsoft regarding Ubuntu. from error reporting, to crash protection (Windows problem reports/solutions), to random rebooting after updates (automatic updates) to various others. thankfully, it can be turned off.
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And...drum-roll please...I've never experienced ANY of that. :D Never, ever, and I've used *buntu since its earliest days. Of course, since 5.04 it's been Kubuntu for me, but still--are you guys talking about those kinds of problems with Kubuntu, too, or just Ubuntu proper?

one glitch i'm still trying to iron out at this time is the random (out of nowhere) issue where Chrome goes into an endless loop and chews through 100% CPU until it panics and forces a shutdown all on its own. when my machine boots up, i see this screen saying 'invalid iomem size, you might experience problems' and when i go into suspend, it says something about CPU package power limit notification. is this something i should be worried about?
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I wish I knew... :dontknow:
 
so far the ChrUbuntu is the only supported Chromebook linux. and the only one which bypasses Google's proprietary BIOS (it uses the dev mode version and boots and replaces ChromeOS entirely). it's based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS w/ Unity. you can tack on KDE, but like tacking on Nova Launcher on a TouchWiz or Sense ROM in Android, you still have the 'evil leftovers' intact.
 
Dngrsone said:
So your problems are likely caused by the fact that your entire machine is a Frankenstein's monster of a hack.
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Yep, I agree. And I think it explains a lot, if not all, of the problems.

Don't get me wrong--I'm all for hacking away at one's *nix computers. But when it ends up where you're just fraught with problems, I don't know...at my advanced age, and with the tiny bit of patience I have these days, that's not my cup of tea. (I hate tea. Let's make that coffee. :)) I prefer to just have a smoothly, ridiculously consistently running computer.
 
As I've mentioned before, I'm running the Ubuntu 13.10 Pre-Release. I've found that its UEFI support is much better than 13.04's, in particular with its Grub actually being capable of launching UEFI Win8 installs (13.04's Grub still thinks any Win8 it detects is a non-UEFI version, and thus won't chainload properly).

That being said, I've seen error reports frequently.....and yet, the thing's stable as a ROCK. The error reports are kinda annoying, but they do not affect my ability to get work done.
 
nickdalzell said:
Regular ole Ubuntu here, with KDE tacked on. The Kubuntu distro is unavailable/unsupported on the Chromebook
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I've been using KDE for awhile, being a big Gnome 2 user and do have Gnome 3 installed. What I did was install a minimum KDE so I wouldn't get all the crap I don't want installed by default. I'm now liking it more and more as I use it! It's been around 6 months or so.
 
I seem to remember someone saying something recently about preferring GNOME apps over their KDE counterparts--but after a bit of perusing this thread, I gave up looking for it. I'm too lazy. :D

So, let me just throw this out there for anyone who doesn't already know: You can install and use GNOME and KDE apps regardless of which DE you're using. Almost without exception, I dislike GNOME apps--they tend to look like window$ 3.1 or thereabouts. :rolleyes: But, for the rare G apps I do like, they run just fine on Kubuntu; gParted is one of the first things I add to a fresh install, as I prefer it over K...whatever it's called. :)
 
Intellectually, I knew that, but thanks for the confirmation/reminder, Moody!

I've finally gotten my usual suite of tools all fixed up the way I like them and it would really suck if I had to change to a bunch of K-stuff.
 
MoodyBlues said:
I seem to remember someone saying something recently about preferring GNOME apps over their KDE counterparts--but after a bit of perusing this thread, I gave up looking for it. I'm too lazy. :D
Click to expand...

Your possibly thinking of a post I made but I generally prefer the KDE apps to their Gnome counterparts which can seem to me to be more basic.

gParted is one of the first things I add to a fresh install, as I prefer it over K...whatever it's called. :)
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On that one, I prefer the Yast partitioner in OpenSuse to gParted. I don't know what the Kde one is.
 
Looking to finally try out some of that KDE goodness today :P

Is it better to run it off a usb drive, or inside a virtual machine?
 
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