Can we convert this old Acer Laptop to chromebook

[Andrew]

Does it take over the whole machine, or can it also run under Win10 ?

[Paul]

You could pop it into a VM and test it.

Name: 2022-07-01-raspios-bullseye-i386.iso Size: 3,607,101,440 bytes (3440 MiB) SHA256: 5FA906DF25E600BF7D7E6A5EB7B0E9B6605E60992EE6C8EFE79BC99E7C2452BD

[Picture]

Execution speed seems slow, other aspects aren't bad (storage and graphics do not hint at this).

Before placing this on a N445, I'd want to know what the hell they've done to make it run that slow. Emulated somehow ? Interpreter ? While it could be the rough edges of the Virtualbox doing this, it seems a bit strange.

Name: RPI.vhd Size: 13,525,870,592 bytes (12 GiB) <=== storage space for VM install, DVD not included in this

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But we have advanced to the point, that we need to know what the "support policy" is, what the "lifecycle" is, before committing more than ten minutes effort on projects like this.

For example, the ChromeOS has an expiration policy, so if you were to unearth a NeverWare CloudReady that runs on 2GB of RAM, the issue would be, you might install it, a banner would pop up that it was now out of support. They have even been selling ChromeOS computing devices on the popular sales sites (and not at low prices either), without telling people the software on them has expired.

It's like selecting tomatoes at the store -- you have to use the right "strategy" if you expect to be able to eat all of the ones you bought. Some software products, are just as fragile as tomatoes. The software must be "bought fresh out of the farm gate".

It means you have to work on two levels. On the one hand, you look at the hardware your machine brings to the table, and what could possibly fit. But you also have to look at how the Repository for the solution is supported, what is the "lifecycle", would my time be better spent doing something else.

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When it comes to Googling your ass off, even when an article makes a claim like "updated 2022", in point of fact, the basis of the article can be completely out the window at this point.

They're showing vids of 19.04. I'm running a throwaway 23.04 in a VM right now. A lot can change, in those intervening years, such as bloated RAM usage. I've run quite a few Google searches, where any attempt to tell Google "give me a 2023 article", all it returns is s**te. We really need to know what is the situation this year, because some of those candidates, are no longer candidates.

Even the introduction of Wayland into the landscape, can be damaging the experience on small machines.

If you look at how Puppy does it (XVesa), you'll find that the graphics stack is quite economical. And not something you will find anyone else doing. Now, if you could move that over top of a core OS, you might have something. (The applications would whine like crazy.)

You could also start with a core OS, and no DE, run "top" and see how much RAM it uses. I've done this with server install discs for Linux, and built a GUI on top of it (using package manager installation commands). You have to be careful, as some distros try to sneak in their commercial offerings, even when you've "unticked all the boxes" in the install table. And you don't want their commercial offerings (Cloud-This-And-That), because those waste RAM.

In Gentoo (Gentoo has been used by things like Kaspersky Rescue Disc and perhaps BitDefender rescue disc), you can control what packages are installed, because they're built from source. It takes a significant effort to pare down the footprint, but, people have done it.

I may have had a floppy diskette at one time, that had Linux on it. (Could have been a terminal session, and no GUI of course, at that size.) Perhaps a 2.x kernel, where a lot of stuff had been removed. Building a custom kernel, and only ticking the boxes for the hardware in your machine, can save some amount of space to load the kernel. But things like LibreOffice would likely remain bloated, by comparison.

Paul

[Joe]

Which is why you might start with Debian (Arch, Mint, Ubuntu, Knoppix and others do) as it has no commercial offerings. It does make non-free software available, and while it is all open-source, it doesn't meet Debian's rather stringent definition of 'free'. Firefox and Thunderbird were kicked out of official Debian when Mozilla trademarked their logos, and were allowed back in when a Debian-compatible licence was offered on them.

Slackware can also be used to make a minimalist system, but that needs significant Linux experience.

That might have been tomsrtbt (Tom's Root and Boot) which contained a kernel and many troubleshooting tools on a 1.44MB floppy, stretched to

1.7MB. A modern troubleshooting Linux is Knoppix.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Any linux will run in a GB. Including Chrome.

Linux Mint MATE or Xfce would work well enough, but the real point is that ant application on an old 32 bit ATOM will seem dog slow these days