Re: Debian on Lenovo Chromebook (ARMv8)
On Thu, 30 Mar 2023 17:50:43 -0400, Brian Sammon wrote:
> hexbuilder's VelvetOS (a (slightly?) modified version of Debian)
> builds might boot from USB--that's what I'm using.
> Check out
>
https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/blob/main/systems/chromebook_oak/readme.md
It works!!! :-) Thank you very much.
The laptop boots fine from the stick, and after booting from the stick,
I dd-ed the entire stick to /dev/mmcblk0, so now the laptop boots from
the MMC into Velvet OS as well.
BTW, I tried what happens when the OS verification is accidentally
turned on again by pressing [Space] and then [Enter] at The Scary Screen.
As expected, it refuses to boot Velvet OS from then on, but fortunately
this can be easily reversed by holding [ESC]+[F3] on the next boot.
Then, at the recovery screen, press [Ctrl]+[D] to turn on Developer Mode.
There will be a warning that all data will be deleted, but what happens
instead is, it will boot normally into Velvet OS again. This is good to
know, because other people might accidentally follow the instructions on
The Scary Screen.
Velvet OS is not ideal for me, but it’s good to know that using and
installing something Debian-like is that easy on this weird machine.
And now I know where to look at.
These things I find not ideal about the current situation:
• Velvet OS is based on Debian sid, not stable.
• Velvet OS comes with a lot of packages pre-installed. Usually, I
start by installing a base system only, and then install the packages
I need using apt.
• Velvet OS comes with XFCE. I don’t know how to uninstall XFCE,
so that startx will start IceWM. This is weird, but propably due to
my lack of knowledge.
• /dev/mmcblk0p4 which is mounted as / is only 2.9 GB large, so most
of the MMC is still free space. So the next step would be to enlarge
this partitition, but I don’t know how.
• /dev/mmcblk0p4 which is mounted as / is formatted as BTRFS. I’ve
never heared of this before. Is this good or bad, compared to EXT4?
Also, I don’t know what would be the steps to replace it with an
EXT4 partition.
Yours,
Thomas
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