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Mostly people who want a lightweight OS that isn't chained to Microsoft.
They're meant to be cheap, disposable notebooks, sort of a super, keyboard-equipped, clamshell tablet. My niece used school-provided Chromebooks in middle school during the pandemic. My nieghbors' kids used Chromebooks at the same time. And that's why they're so plentiful used. School systems bought them, and now they're getting rid of them.
I wasn't interested in them when they started coming out -- I didn't see the point of something that only worked "in the cloud" -- but with used ones readily available and cheap, why not buy one or two and turn them into inexpensive Linux notebooks? I'm not losing anything if they crap out or get lost.
But do any of them have any decent internal storage? Can you even work offline on a Chromebook?
Not really, no. They're not intended to be used offline, though you can configure them for some offline use.
The two I bought and turned into Linux notebooks are both Acer C720s. Both came with 4 gigs of memory, one had a 16 gig M2 eMMc chip, the other a 32 gig chip. I replaced both with 128 gig eMMc chips. I could have gone bigger on the storage, I guess, but I couldn't see why I'd want more. You can't do this with all Chromebooks, unfortunately; more recent ones have everything soldered to the board.
Which model had a 32gig chip and by chip do you mean an m.2 drive or something else?
Both had 4gb of system RAM. Both are Acer C720s. Some models only have 2gb of RAM.
One had a 16gb chip (essentially, an SSD, but the size of a quarter). The other's was 32gb. I could have fit either Endeavour or Mint on that, but I wanted more space, hence the 128gb chips.
So now both are basically Linux notebooks with 4gb of RAM with 128gb SSDs. Does that make more sense?
One had a 16gb chip (essentially, an SSD, but the size of a quarter). The other's was 32gb. I could have fit either Endeavour or Mint on that, but I wanted more space, hence the 128gb chips.
So now both are basically Linux notebooks with 4gb of RAM with 128gb SSDs. Does that make more sense?
Google is your friend as well as the brains behind Chromebooks
I discovered Monday night I sorta broke Mint, though I'm going to let it ride for a while.
I uninstalled Flathub some time ago. I didn't have any Flatpaks installed, the browser I use (Vivaldi) provides updated .deb files, and for pretty much anything else (like LibreOffice) I'm fine with being behind the times. So, I uninstalled Flathub to free up some space and make the system a little lighter.
Mint's Software Center won't run without Flathub.
That's okay. The terminal and Synaptic are the ways I invariably install software. I genuinely think the last time I installed something from the Software Center was GIMP with Mint 17.2. (I stayed on 17.2 a long time.) I'm not missing out by not being able to use Software Center. And, I suppose I could just reinstall Flathub.
But, like I said, I think I'm going to let it ride, do the upgrade to 21.3 in six months, then do a clean install of 22 next summer.
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Clem Lefebvre's looking at your post and saying "I just put that in there, why are you taking it out?"I discovered Monday night I sorta broke Mint, though I'm going to let it ride for a while.
I uninstalled Flathub some time ago. I didn't have any Flatpaks installed, the browser I use (Vivaldi) provides updated .deb files, and for pretty much anything else (like LibreOffice) I'm fine with being behind the times. So, I uninstalled Flathub to free up some space and make the system a little lighter.
Mint's Software Center won't run without Flathub.
That's okay. The terminal and Synaptic are the ways I invariably install software. I genuinely think the last time I installed something from the Software Center was GIMP with Mint 17.2. (I stayed on 17.2 a long time.) I'm not missing out by not being able to use Software Center. And, I suppose I could just reinstall Flathub.
But, like I said, I think I'm going to let it ride, do the upgrade to 21.3 in six months, then do a clean install of 22 next summer.
Fortunately, Mint is resilient, and I'm glad it didn't destroy your whole system. That said, if you want to reinstall the software center, all you have to do is sudo apt install mint-software-center, and that should fix things. I think.
Speaking of Mint, I just moved back to it (Mint 21.2, Cinnamon). It's honestly where I should have moved months ago, but I wanted the newest latest shiny even though my hardware doesn't require it, and I got tired of keeping up with everything, that and Fedora's absurdly long metadata lookups that make what would be a 10 second installation or update check stretch out to 5, 10, 15 minutes at a time.
Cinnamon's such a flexible DE, I forget how much so. Right now, everything looks like it did on KDE (except for the dock at the bottom, which Cinnamon doesn't do), and it's running at 1.3GB of RAM on idle, rather than Fedora KDE's 4GB of RAM on idle. Yeah, RAM is meant to be used, but I don't like things that are memory hogs, myself. It goes back to my DOS days.
I'm a Debian/Ubuntu person anyway, I missed my apt package manager.
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Indeed! It's nice to be back. I cut my teeth on Mint, and after trying Arch, Debian, Fedora, and nearly all of their iterations at some point, I come back to Mint because it's just easy to use, and it's reliable. Plus, I really like the changes they made in 21.2. The theming feels a lot more cohesive and up to date.Welcome back to a sane and reliable OS.. to me it's like that comfy old leather chair, that favourite pair of jeans, that super comfy shirt etc etc..
Oh, and no telemetry. No corporate overseers making changes based on the bottom line. It's a community distro for the community.
I do like to test stuff and then mess up.. I mean my testdummy machine has Tuxedo and another OS on it, can't remember which distro it was again but it crashed and burned a few times which is fine.. just NOT on my main machine which I like to be as reliable as possible, it also runs fast and the machine is just a Pentium Gold 6400, I've used that one for the last 3 years and it's cool, quiet and runs Mint really well.
Cinnamon has become quite fast and streamlined over time and for the kind of GUI it is the resources it takes are indeed low.
As for Mint's plan B, even if Ubuntu can't be used as a base to build on they have a Debian edition in case of such an event so continuity will be maintained in case of a Ubuntu stinker..
Cinnamon has become quite fast and streamlined over time and for the kind of GUI it is the resources it takes are indeed low.
As for Mint's plan B, even if Ubuntu can't be used as a base to build on they have a Debian edition in case of such an event so continuity will be maintained in case of a Ubuntu stinker..
I think I'm going to give LMDE 6 a try when it comes out in 4-6 weeks or so. The polish of Mint with the stability of Debian.
Another cool video I found this time about BeOs
Never used it, I do know there's a open source alternative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
I have that. I missed the 90s and all these alternatives that could have been great. It's a shame MS didn't just die an early death, it could have been good.
BeOs could do things windows couldn't like play multiple media files at the same time without stuttering because it had a low overhead.
spun it up under Virtual machine.
Nice to look at but there was dearth of applications for it.
