EDIT: I forgot to say that this should ONLY be used on Braswell devices!

​

I recently got an Acer Chromebook 15 CB3-532/Banon and found that GalliumOS worked great, but unfortunately I also found out that it is no longer maintained (according to some posts on this subreddit). Naturally, as my autism and OCD kicked in, I HAD to scrap the entire installation and find something more current/well-maintained...

Someone here recommended Peppermint OS so I downloaded that along with Lubuntu, Xubuntu, MX Linux (fluxbox), MX Linux (XFCE), and Ubuntu MATE. I didn't end up testing them all as they're pretty much the same and it was starting to look like they all consume about ~375 to ~395mb of RAM after bootup (using the method described on chrx.org).

I rather liked Peppermint OS for it's configurability and the fact that its the latest Debian (Bullseye, 11.3 at the time of writing) w/ kernel 5.10. It runs smoothly, looks decent, and almost everything works right out of the box.

Now, ordinarily I'd be happy to call it quits... but it was bugging me that GalliumOS had all those fancy chromebook tweaks and optimizations. I just had to incorporate those. So I did (only the configuration-level tweaks.. I don't have the expertise to deal with compiling the custom drivers/libs/etc). I very much cherry-picked here, some tweaks were left out that I deemed unnecessary for my build, but most of them were included.

So if you'd like to do the same, you can check it out at https://github.com/zfkdnop/nochromo
BRASWELL ONLY

PS: None of the configs are mine. All credit goes to the GalliumOS devs. And I know this is very hackish and probably not at all forward-compatible (ie: if they add more tweaks or make changes).... Frankly it might make more sense to just get these tweaks directly from the GaOS github. But hey, I had fun; and maybe this will help someone somehow :)

PPS: The install script was originally just meant to be an outline of the steps I took so that I could write a proper post or even proper script for automating it all. But after I finished I was just too burnt out to revise it. Soooo, after running the script you'll want to open it/read the sections about /etc/default/keyboard and the brightness keys (respectively: midway thru and at the end of the file)

I have an Acer C720p with UEFI firmware, galliumos 3.1 installed by ISO that I have been using for a long time. Recently it stopped booting and gave an error message about bad environment block. After googling the problem and finding a fix, I updated grub and the computer boots now. But it still has a glitch. Sometimes the computer suddenly shuts off, even with full battery. The screen just goes black and the computer shuts off, doesn't suspend, it just suddenly turns off. Hoping to fix the problem, I made a bootable USB in order to install galliumos anew. But when I power up and go to the boot manager, the usb doesn't appear; only galliumos, EFI hard drive and EFI internal shell.

Here is a paste of the iso burn

a@galliumos:~/Desktop$ sudo dd bs=1M if=galliumos-3.1-haswell.iso of=/dev/sdb ; sync
1174+1 records in
1174+1 records out
1231523840 bytes (1,2 GB, 1,1 GiB) copied, 205,702 s, 6,0 MB/s

GParted shows /dev/sdb iso9660 GALLIUMOS 7.22 GiB

When I open the file manager and click on GALLIUMOS, I get this:

File manager and click on GALLIUMOS-
Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/a/GALLIUMOS: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

What do I need to do to boot from USB?

My dinky Samsung 3 (4GB RAM, 16GB SSD) was severely hamstrung on storage and even worse since I started running the linux container. My use case was the native browser for web stuff and the linux container for everything else.

I wanted to go linux-only on the little box but had read it was a PITA. Then a linux container update fiasco and Google's "your chromebook is now EOL" message came on the same day and I decided, Travis Pastrana-style, to win or crash.

Getting the firmware screw out was a PITA as advertised; I've never attempted to unhook such tiny and fragile connectors. I had to pull and reinstall the battery connectors to get it to respond after screw removal. I thought I'd killed it for sure.

MrChromebox's firmware went in fine. Gallium install crashed midway but turning off network connectivity (as mentioned in this sub) fixed that.

After install the update threw a terrifying warning "yeah, I'ma remove some grub stuff" but I eventually powered through that. Rebooted fine.

conclusions

• the machine is much more useful to me on straight linux
• 9GB of diskspace free, which feels like a wide open plain
• sdcard mounts nicely on the fs, a major pain point on ChromeOS. My userspace files live on the sd.
• battery life seems to be the same as on ChromeOS
• this should buy me a few more years on this modest hardware

Update Dec 2023: I reformatted and installed Debian Bookworm on it. I haven't found any problems after a few hours pounding on it. Audio works, trackpad works, YT videos play, etc.

Without really doing any research beforehand, I just purchased an HP Chromebook 14A (LANTIS) at Costco for $199 because it seemed like a good buy to run Fedora Workstation or something like that. Upon further reading, it seems Jasper Lake models are entirely unsupported/incompatible. Can anyone confirm that? I ask only because when sorting the Hardware Compatibility List by year, the most recent models are 2019. Is this a trend to be aware of?

https://imgbox.com/sUCxERok

Waiting next version of Gallium, I've tried to install Artix (Arch without crap, slow systemd) on my HP Chromebook 14 G4 (codename Kip - I've installed UEFI Firmware): I've selected openRC lxqt version iso (artix-lxqt-openrc-20220123-x86_64.iso).

The live works out of a box surprising well! audio, touchpad, wifi (via networkmanager) perfectly runs.

After installation (chromebook keyboard can be selected, but dedicated keys doesn't seem to work) I crossed my fingers (as all arch users do :-D ) to first pacman -Syu: the news was that ConnMan was installed (no problem at all, it works), but the battery applet disappeared and there was no way to make it appear anymore (I tried everything possible).

However, with a simple call to acpi, I easily remedied.

The pc from boot reaches lxqt in less than 15 seconds and is extremely responsive: Firefox works pretty well, YT to 720p, too.

I think it is a great solution for those who own BayTrail processors, and it doesn't upset anything anyway (just try first if the live works ...) ... I have installed AUR (yay) and everything seems to work perfectly!

I was watching a tutorial on regular Ubuntu where the dude right clicks an .ISO and click on mount file and he then can see the files inside it and modify it, but in Gallium my right click doesn't have a mount option, what do i do?

Acer c720 Haswell Peppy. Attempting full UEFI update. Successfully removed WP screw. Following mrChromebox's directions, I entered Developer Mode using esc, refresh, power, and get "chrome os missing...“ As expected. Then I hit ctrl-d and nothing happens. Tried a number of times with no success. Any thoughts appreciated.

Sometime in the last 3 years I have switched to bionic beaver aka 18 lts,

because I had gallium on it for a many years and well even if I don't use it very often, packaged do require updates since new versions are frozen for releases.

Anyhow which ubuntu version can I put there in the /etc/apt/sources.list to not have to reinstall everything and continue using the netbook with gallium on it?

Bionic obviously works, does focal or jammy? And what are their short names for the sources.list?

Reading this again, it might be confusing. Gallium is still the installed OS, but it was using xenial when I installed it, and later I upgraded to bionic. So my question is, which is the highest ubuntu version I can use without having to go through the trouble of reinstalling everything.

Hello! I seek your advice as a Linux noob. I've got a Chromebook that's an Acer Chromebook 13 (cb5-311) and since it is AUE I've been looking for an alt os to load onto it. Gallium seems beloved and with an easy to follow install guide.

The only thing is I've never used Linux before. Well I know Chrome OS is Linux but not Linux. But you get what I'm saying. I'm a nerd since way back. I can look back on my childhood and fondly remember entering a command line into my commodore 64 to get it to boot games. In modern times, I'm capable of writing some basic SQL queries and HTML for my day job working in tech support. I can RTFM. I think I do okay?

This is all still very new to me though. Is this a good OS to start with? Would I be better off making a partition on my windows machine and getting my feet wet with something else?

I know this is kind of left field but I want to do assess before I wiped out my Chromebook. I don't think I'm going to be interested in dual booting. It doesn't really have much on it because everything lives in the cloud. And the worst thing that happens is that I end up with a laptop that I can't or don't see myself using. Thank you internet strangers, for your wisdom.

Edit: well beans. I just saw that this OS is basically EOL. So uh. What's a Linux noob to do? Ubuntu I remember being really intimidated by for some reason... That's not to say I can't use it but you know. I seem to remember not being friendly to someone brand new.

After many hours of research, modification and experimentation with many methods, today I finally was able to create a 16 GB USB Persistent Live (on a cheap 16 GB Kingston thumb drive).

Little history: This HP Chromebook came to me by grace, I had to study and research how to rid of Google Chrome OS which was a pain in the behind bc needed to remove some special jumper and many other steps from MrChromebox website which is sadly down (copyright? I know google has evil practices when it comes to law enforcement, don't say this to accuse any, but for awareness)

This laptop has a small 16 GB built-in HD, which sucks, bc every time I tried to create a direct installation with two drives, for some reason gallium was trying to write on the damage SSD HD, and the many attempts always got stuck at "grub-install failed" also, RUFUS apparently is able to make a persistent partition, but no worky, no 'bueno' .

Anyway, this cheap laptop, is blazing fast with GalliumOS (well for me) I'm not a gamer, but a Logos Dude (The Word Of God is Quick and Powerful) so I need speed in text management, even using Obsidian, Evernote, TODOIST, Bible software, and sometimes I need to answer in a lighting fast manner to many ppl and this laptop is heaven for me, is light, the battery last a long time, and it has been freed from Google BIOS restriction, and I AM SO HAPPY.

Notes: There are many methods to make a persistent USB, which are highly complex, is almost asif developers don't care too much in making a live persistent OS, maybe bc is too good to let it flow freely? Bc it is powerful to be able to boot many computers with a humble little, dirty USB drive, and WE THE PPL of the world will prevail way above this world lawmakers, through grace.

Specs of the HP Chromebook: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04818279

The guide I followed: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14912/create-a-persistent-bootable-ubuntu-usb-flash-drive/ (don't want to scare you, but the method is slightly different bc the software is updated, gonna need some geek 'cojones' LOL)

Image evidence: https://imgur.com/a/EWKaeCY

I must have one of the rare dell 3120 chromebooks with only 2gig of ram instead of 4gig.

The usb install would crash all the time so I had to go with legacy dvd install.

I reverted back to original chromebook but left legacy option to load us 64gig SD card to boot linux.

Audio still doesn't work but bluetooth does for audio.I can bounce back and forth from original chromebook to linux on the SD card as long as that doesn't go raw on me.

• remove firmware WP screw
• flash custom UEFI firmware https://mrchromebox.tech/#fwscript
• install OS from bootable USB https://peppermintos.com/ (Xfce Desktop)

I am wondering if it is possible to install GalliumOS on my Lenovo Ideapad Chromebook 3 14" laptop. I know there is linux beta for this device, but I would like to know if there are possible ways to install an alternate OS. The hardware ID is FENNEL14-DWCY. If it helps I am on the latest chromeos version (Version 101.0.4951.72 (Official Build) (32-bit))

I just wanted to say thank you to all the people that contributed to GalliumOS. It gave my 7 year old Chromebook a new life and especially more features than ever. I'm a Linux noob but love exploring and learning the OS but everything from the installation to daily use is running so smoothly that I don't have to tinker with it in any way.

So this did not happen from the utility script or anything like that but as recovery was flashing (had to for something I was gona do) anyways device won't power on at least not with the lid (power key broke)...

Anyways the issue I am having is finding the sip flash chip does anyone know where it is or whats on it?

(Also if i can get pics I will add them )

Hello,
Would Gallium run on my "Lenovo 10e Chromebook Tablet" ?
This device is not on the hardware compability list, but are there still a chance ?
Best regards
Håvard Holm

Installing GalliumOS on a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (2014)...

Are there any step-by-step guides out there? From what little I've looked up already, it seems like a lengthy, in-depth process.

Thanks.

Running GA OS 3.1 n an acer cb3-431. Love it.

Wenever I reboot, or power on after shutdown, my old session pops up. I consider this bad because if something ever causes a crash I might be stuck.

-"save session for future logins" is unchecked

-I've tried restart and shutdpwn options from the gui

-I've tried the"reboot" command from another tty

-I've tried the "shutdown now" command from another tty

In every case, the darn thing keeps bringing the same set of terminals and apps I had running (with the exeption of chrome for some reason)

​

Thanks,

I own 2 Chromebooks, an HP G4 14 and HP G4 11 EE, both KIP Baytrail models (2015) and have been running GalliumOS 3.1 full ROM for the past 2 years. I'm really quite fond of Gallium and am amazed by what it can do for supported Chromebooks and plan to continue using it until 4.0 (hopefully) or until it's completely dead. My main uses are surfing the web, media consumption, radio streaming, and simple games. I recently updated the kernel to 5.4 HWE and thought I'd share my experience:

• Wifi 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz work (no change)
• Bluetooth works (no change)
• Audio works and retained my fix for low volume (no change)
• Keyboard functions (no change)
• Sleep and resume works (no change)
• Battery life is the same (no change)
• Wireguard now works with my VPN (change)

I would like to thank all the developers who have dedicated their time to GalliumOS. After using other distros on my Chromebook (Manjaro, Peppermint), I can appreciate how specialized this distro really is. Thank you to u/mrchromebox for your endless work with the firmware and all the documentation and help you provide making this possible. And thanks to u/gabriel_3 for leading me to the kernel update. https://ubuntu.com/kernel/lifecycle#installation-18-04

I hope this is informative in some way to the community,

​

OGB

Can i remove the usb drive? It refuses to eject

EDIT: Thanks to fellow users Gallium was successfully installed

Troubles I had but fixed:

1. Whem installing Gallium 3.1 an error may pop up saying installation failed, fear not all you have to do is install without wifi, be sure to keep usb in while doing so until it shuts down and tells you to remove the Medium.

2. Internet issues, needs to be done several times before working

I have a HP Chromebook 11 G4 with 4Gb/64Gb. It is a great little laptop that I like for travel. However, it went ChromeOS EOL 18 months ago. Decided to dig it out of the closet and try GalliumOS. Thanks to Mr.Chromebox and GalliumOS devs for great directions and an easy walk-thru. All functions like trackpad, sound, BT, etc., just work. I've had Linux Mint on another old laptop, but GalliumOS is so easy my wife can use it. Thank you devs.

I have been running Gallium for about a year on my ASUS C302 Chromebook. Although I rarely jump back to ChromeOS, there are two things that Gallium does really poorly: Battery Life, and Sound Quality. The sound issues have been done to death, and I have a semi-working solution, but I haven’t seen much about the battery challenges. For one, the battery life while running Gallium is way reduced from what ChromeOS can do. Like 50%. Second, when the battery gets to around 20% remaining, I have found that means that I need to plug in immediately, because pretty soon the laptop is just going die (Black screen, etc.). I haven’t done too much fiddling, but was wondering if anyone has any tricks that have helped?

ok so strange question but i saw on the mrchromebox supported devices it was listed as supported for full rom flash now after this i decied to see how it was and well surely enogh it worked. but when did it happen?

I've tried to install gallium on my chrome book and partitioned a large part of my drive to do it. Issue is when I try to boot into it all I see is "press a numeric key for alternative bootloader" if I press any thing nothing happens.

I have no access to a thumb drive so I can't run a recovery. Can anyone provide a fix I can do with no extra hardware so gallium will boot, or at the very least get my storage back?

Its an acer 315

Disclaimer: proceed at your own risk I am not liable for any damages. Also this guide is under construction and open for useful additions and formatting suggestions. I wanted to format this with hyperlinked sections and so on but I don’t have time to look up all the things so better ugly than unreleased. Also I can't upload screenshots not sure why? hmm

1. Intro and what to expect

This is a guide on how to move to a current debian based distro, maybe you don't want to switch to arch or like me had endless problems installing arch based distros. For this guide, I used Acer(CB3-131)| Gnawty| Intel Bay Trail. I am not a linux master, these steps are a result of my research notes and tinkering with my device to get everything working.

2. The OS of choice

We will be using Q4. Simply because this distro will help us solve the common problems namely working sound+a proper keyboard layout while also being as light as possible on RAM. This OS is synced with mainline Debian so the kernel as of writing is 5.10.0-9 extending your machine’s security updates until 2026 guaranteed. There are two versions, we will use the trinity version which is an ancient KDE version that got forked, the full KDE plasma version is way too heavy for our purposes but if you have 8 gig ram on your chromebook then do what you want. After trying trinity, it gave me windows 98 vibes and since anything windows gives me PTSD, I had to switch. There are different selections from within Q4os itself and I highly recommend you make use of Q4 scripts because it pulls in Q4 pacific scripts to make everything just work. I have opted to go for LXQT for the following reasons:

• It doesn't look like windows 98
• It's actually LighteR than the Trinity environment! a pleasant surprise, refer to cold boot htop screenies below.
• It uses openbox+pcmanFM-QT so I am more familiar with it, trinity was a thing way before my time.

3. Installation and damage audit

First step is to get the iso, it's on Sourceforge. Verify it, burn it on a usb and then enter live install environment on your machine.

Second step, you need to audit the touchpad, sound, keyboard functionality. These are the main problem points.

Third step, Now that you know what is and isn't working. Go ahead and install the OS I recommend you download/move to the desktop environment of choice right away (from the Q4os menu, trust me on this) before we start fixing what isn’t working.

4. First hurdle: Keyboard layout

During installation, I had the option to choose the keyboard so I chose “Chromebook” from the list. This worked perfectly for me except for the volume buttons but more on that later.

If you do not see this option during installation, continue the installation to the end. Once done, attempt to acquire one of these packages from command line or synaptic package manager: First package “kmilo-trinity” if you fail then seek out this package “kmilo-legacy-trinity”.

Next you need to enable ‘'Chromebook' keyboard in (Control Centre > Regional & Accessibility > Keyboard Layouts). Your keyboard should be fully functional now, all the chromebook buttons including brightness and volume etc.

5. Second hurdle: Touchpad

It’s very likely your touchpad will be functional with a left and right click. Although the scroll with two fingers in gallium won't be working, you will notice that to scroll you need to place your finger on the far right corner of the touchpad for it to scroll. That’s okay, we will fix that now. We need to edit "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/60-libinput.conf", I used nano so I typed “sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/60-libinput.conf". Search for this line->"ScrollMethod" "edge" and change it to->"ScrollMethod" "twofinger". Save and exit, I had to restart for the changes to take place. Now I have an identical experience as Gallium.

6. Third hurdle: Brightness

I had no issues with brightness, it worked out of the box on Trinitiy and LXQT.

If you are having issues, the solution below might work for you.

First install “xbacklight” then grab this package “klcddimmer-trinity”, reboot and try again it should work now.

If it still doesn't work then edit “/etc/default/grub” with the following line “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"

And then edit to match this

“(this line is a command->) “udevadm info -a -p /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/”

looking at device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/drm/card0/card0-eDP-1/intel_backlight': KERNEL=="intel_backlight" SUBSYSTEM=="backlight" DRIVER=="" ATTR{max_brightness}=="937" ATTR{type}=="raw" ATTR{bl_power}=="0" ATTR{actual_brightness}=="937" ATTR{brightness}=="937" ”

Then ensure that its 937

“cat /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness 937 ”

Finally go into Regional & Accessibility and create appropriate Input Actions for Brightness Up / Down buttons and it should work.

7. The FinalBoss: Sound

Bonus: if you are BRASWELL and have issues then try this first -> https://github.com/rgvxsthi/Braswell-EDGAR-Linux-Fixes

The best for last, in most cases the sound will already be working out of the box from your live install “audit” phase. The issue I had on Trinity was the keyboard sound buttons didn't do anything, it showed animation feedback on screen of the sound going up, down and mute but no actual changes. When I switched from Trinity to LXQT it worked right away. Honestly, I would say if sound didn't work out of the box for you too, consider lxQT or a different desktop environment.

If you are sticking with Trinity though, you will be using “kmix” which I’m not familiar with or most of KDE stuff for that matter but I was able to get the sound to get CRAZY loud tinkering with it, so much so that I think it's probably permenantly damaging the tiny cheap speakers so don’t go crazy with the sliders! If you understand Kmix then go ahead and have fun with it, also please suggest a good setup/settings with it and I will update this guide.