Upgrading and Configuring Linux on a Chromebook: A Step-by-Step Guide

To start, we need to update and upgrade our Linux installation. This is an essential step before making any changes to our system. To do this, open a terminal window on your Chromebook and type "sudo apt-get update" followed by "sudo apt-get upgrade". Press Enter to continue. This process may take some time, depending on the speed of your internet connection.

Once the update and upgrade process is complete, we can proceed to change our root password. Make sure you remember this new password, as it will be required for future login attempts. To change your root password, type "sudo passwd" followed by "root" in the terminal window. You will not see your new password on screen, so retype it carefully. If you enter an incorrect password, you will know it's wrong because it won't work.

Next, we need to install the KDE Plasma desktop environment. This is a popular and feature-rich desktop environment that offers many benefits over other options. To do this, type "sudo apt-get install task kde-desktop" in the terminal window. This may take some time to complete, as it involves downloading and installing a large number of files.

While the installation process is running, you can use your Chromebook normally. However, if you need to access certain online resources or check your email, you may want to consider using another device while the installation completes. The installation process typically takes between 20-35 minutes, depending on your internet connection speed and the power of your machine.

Once the installation is complete, we can start the KDE Plasma desktop environment by typing "startx" in the terminal window (note: no spaces). Press Enter to continue. If you encounter any errors when trying to start the desktop, do not worry – there are a few troubleshooting steps you can take. However, for now, let's focus on enjoying our new desktop.

As we explore our KDE Plasma desktop environment, we'll discover many features that make it enjoyable and functional. One of the first things you'll notice is the "Auto-Hide Shelf" feature, which allows you to hide certain widgets or applications when not in use. To enable this, simply right-click on an application or widget and select "Auto-Hide Shelf".

As we navigate our desktop environment, we'll also find several pre-installed applications, including Firefox, a full-fledged image editor, and the App Store. The App Store allows us to easily install new applications, making it easy to customize our desktop environment to suit our needs.

If you don't have an internet connection while using your Linux desktop, you may be prompted to enter your Chromebook password in order to access online resources. Don't worry – this is just a normal part of the configuration process.

To further customize our desktop environment, we can use the "Configure Desktop" option from within the application menu. From here, we can change the look and feel of our desktop by selecting different themes or wallpapers. We'll also find options for customizing our widgets and other graphical elements.

For those who want to get really creative with their Linux setup, there are many customization options available through the "System Settings" application. Here, you can fine-tune almost every aspect of your system, from the layout of your desktop to the behavior of your applications.

Finally, once we've completed our customizations and explored all that our Linux desktop has to offer, it's time to exit back into Chrome mode. To do this, simply type "exit" in the terminal window and press Enter. You'll be returned to your Chromebook operating system, where you can use your device as usual.

Overall, this guide should provide a good introduction to using Linux on a Chromebook. While it may not be a replacement for a full-fledged laptop or desktop computer, it's a fun and useful way to customize your device and explore the possibilities of the Linux operating system.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today i'm going to show you how to install a linux desktop on your chromebook and with this method here it's not going to affect any of the files that are already on your chromebook you can use your chromebook as a chromebook but will also have access to this kde plasma desktop in the past few months i've personally had to deal with chromebooks a lot because i have children that are in school right now we're doing online school they got chromebooks to do it so i've been looking for neat ways to mess around with these things and not interfere with the chrome os that's already pre-installed and there's actually a lot of stuff that we can do with chromebooks but in this video i'm going to show you how to get a linux desktop up and running and with this method here it's running in virtualization it's not going to mess with any of the chrome os components whatsoever and you can easily delete this and all of the linux applications that we can download and use with this desktop interface but before we get started here i do want to mention that this is not a replacement for a linux laptop or a desktop this is just a neat little trick that we can do with a chromebook if you've ever wanted to run a linux desktop interface on your chromebook without having to wipe anything from the internal drive this is an easy way to do it and as you can see we do have access to kde widgets we also have access to other linux apps there's an app store built in to this desktop here so you don't have to install stuff through terminal and it actually works out really well and by the way the chromebook that i'm using here only has a little dual core celeron processor with four gigs of ram so if you want to get this up and running let's go ahead and get started okay so here we are i've just plugged this into my game capture device so we could get a better look at the screen now the very first thing we need to do is enable linux on our chromebook most new chromebooks do have this option and a lot of the older ones actually do if they received updates and it's actually really simple to enable this option so we're gonna head to our settings and from here you'll see linux beta if this is not listed then your chromebook does not support linux faded and this can be done but a majority of the newer ones and some older ones do as you can see this is going to allow us to run linux tools editors and ids on our chromebook we're going to turn this on choose next and you can set up a name here it needs to be lowercase so the disk size on this will matter we're sitting at recommended five gigs but we need about 10 just to make sure everything works so we're going to choose custom here we can drag this up just going to go to 11 to make sure choose install and this could take a few minutes to finish up i can close my settings down in the background and once it's finished you'll be presented with a screen that looks like this this is our linux terminal this is how we're going to install everything now this is running in virtualization so if you ever want to just delete linux and everything that you've installed through the linux terminal here you can go ahead and disable linux in the settings just like we enabled it and it's not going to affect anything that you have on the chromebook and this is a really good way to get used to using it in the past like i mentioned you had to wipe the hard drive and install linux now with this method it doesn't affect anything that you already have going on with your chromebook so if you're using this for school or something like that you can always delete this very easily and get all your space back so now that we have linux up and running on our chromebook we can now install the desktop i'm going to move this right over here and i've got everything we need right here i'm going to leave this in the description this is going to allow us to update linux and install the kde plasma desktop so the first line we need to do is sudo apt get update and and sudo apt get dist upgrade this is going to update our linux build on our chromebook and by the way this is actually using debian you can copy and paste these or you can type them out if you'd like to but these need to go into terminal so i'm going to go ahead and copy move it over here press enter and it's going to start the update process you may run into a continue prompt type y and press enter all right so now that linux is updated and upgraded let's go ahead and change our root password for linux now make sure you remember this password that you're going to put in so we're going to do sudo p-a-s-s-w-d root now we need to type in our new password press enter it's not going to show up so you can't see it retype the password and if you got it wrong you'll know it by this because it's not going to work my password was updated successfully now it's time to install the kde plasma desktop sudo apt get install task kde desktop press enter and this could take a little while depending on your internet connection it's 3.8 gigs it's also going to download some applications for us that we need then it's going to extract it i've had it take 20 to 35 minutes to finish up on a slow chromebook on a faster device with a decent internet connection it might do it a bit quicker and enter it's going to start downloading everything we need for that desktop and by the way you can actually use the chromebook while this is going on if you'd like to we can go ahead and start watching a youtube video it's really up to you so it's really not going to notify you when it's finished up but if we don't have a bunch of errors right here this one's looking pretty good we can actually start the kde desktop right here by just typing in start kde with no spaces press enter now if for some reason you do run into an error when you're trying to start kde you will have to input one more command in terminal this is going to fix the x11 window just wanted to put that out there also leave this in the description below and while this is starting up you can actually right click here and auto hide shelf if you'd like to and the desktop is now going to start go with external display and here it is we now have the plasma desktop up in the top right hand corner we can add some widgets very easily add widget i'm going to go with a few here we'll do the application dashboard i'll add a clock and i'm going to find the cpu monitor and we can move these around by long clicking on these and this is going to be our application launcher so from here you can see that there are a few applications that did pre-install with this we do have firefox uh where is it right here go ahead and launch this we now have a full-fledged image editor here and you can always install this directly through the terminal on chrome itself but have this desktop is actually pretty awesome it does install some really great apps like the app store and from here we can install different applications so if we go to application we can find games uh super tux cart something easy to install real quick and if you don't have internet while you're in the linux desktop it might have prompted you in the background to put in your chromebook password to allow internet just check down here mine's already set up so it's good to go i do have internet through the kde desktop we'll let this install we'll go back and find some different applications we have developer tools education graphics internet multimedia sn player we'll install that too so give this a little time to finish up and once everything's finished installing we can actually find it from here super tux cart see if it starts up this was just something quick and easy to install so yeah even easier to run linux games will work on the now chromebook can also change the look of the desktop configure desktop we have different wallpapers you can actually download new wallpapers or add your own images i'll just go with something that looks like this and if you really want to change the look of pretty much everything here we can go to our applications system settings look and feel we can go with dark there's also some themes that we can install through here we'll apply this breeze dark just kind of give us a dark look to all of our widgets but yeah that's pretty much it and in order to exit this desktop we'll just go down to the taskbar terminal close terminal out we're back to chrome and we can use this like a chromebook without interfering with anything that's on the book itself so yeah that's pretty much it for this video really appreciate you watching i thought it was a cool little trick i figured i'd go ahead and do a quick tutorial on it i know there's some people out there that'll get some enjoyment out of using this but overall like i mentioned this is not a replacement for a real linux laptop or a desktop just something fun to mess around with on your chromebook everything you need to know is going to be linked in the description below even the commands we used to get this installed but like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today i'm going to show you how to install a linux desktop on your chromebook and with this method here it's not going to affect any of the files that are already on your chromebook you can use your chromebook as a chromebook but will also have access to this kde plasma desktop in the past few months i've personally had to deal with chromebooks a lot because i have children that are in school right now we're doing online school they got chromebooks to do it so i've been looking for neat ways to mess around with these things and not interfere with the chrome os that's already pre-installed and there's actually a lot of stuff that we can do with chromebooks but in this video i'm going to show you how to get a linux desktop up and running and with this method here it's running in virtualization it's not going to mess with any of the chrome os components whatsoever and you can easily delete this and all of the linux applications that we can download and use with this desktop interface but before we get started here i do want to mention that this is not a replacement for a linux laptop or a desktop this is just a neat little trick that we can do with a chromebook if you've ever wanted to run a linux desktop interface on your chromebook without having to wipe anything from the internal drive this is an easy way to do it and as you can see we do have access to kde widgets we also have access to other linux apps there's an app store built in to this desktop here so you don't have to install stuff through terminal and it actually works out really well and by the way the chromebook that i'm using here only has a little dual core celeron processor with four gigs of ram so if you want to get this up and running let's go ahead and get started okay so here we are i've just plugged this into my game capture device so we could get a better look at the screen now the very first thing we need to do is enable linux on our chromebook most new chromebooks do have this option and a lot of the older ones actually do if they received updates and it's actually really simple to enable this option so we're gonna head to our settings and from here you'll see linux beta if this is not listed then your chromebook does not support linux faded and this can be done but a majority of the newer ones and some older ones do as you can see this is going to allow us to run linux tools editors and ids on our chromebook we're going to turn this on choose next and you can set up a name here it needs to be lowercase so the disk size on this will matter we're sitting at recommended five gigs but we need about 10 just to make sure everything works so we're going to choose custom here we can drag this up just going to go to 11 to make sure choose install and this could take a few minutes to finish up i can close my settings down in the background and once it's finished you'll be presented with a screen that looks like this this is our linux terminal this is how we're going to install everything now this is running in virtualization so if you ever want to just delete linux and everything that you've installed through the linux terminal here you can go ahead and disable linux in the settings just like we enabled it and it's not going to affect anything that you have on the chromebook and this is a really good way to get used to using it in the past like i mentioned you had to wipe the hard drive and install linux now with this method it doesn't affect anything that you already have going on with your chromebook so if you're using this for school or something like that you can always delete this very easily and get all your space back so now that we have linux up and running on our chromebook we can now install the desktop i'm going to move this right over here and i've got everything we need right here i'm going to leave this in the description this is going to allow us to update linux and install the kde plasma desktop so the first line we need to do is sudo apt get update and and sudo apt get dist upgrade this is going to update our linux build on our chromebook and by the way this is actually using debian you can copy and paste these or you can type them out if you'd like to but these need to go into terminal so i'm going to go ahead and copy move it over here press enter and it's going to start the update process you may run into a continue prompt type y and press enter all right so now that linux is updated and upgraded let's go ahead and change our root password for linux now make sure you remember this password that you're going to put in so we're going to do sudo p-a-s-s-w-d root now we need to type in our new password press enter it's not going to show up so you can't see it retype the password and if you got it wrong you'll know it by this because it's not going to work my password was updated successfully now it's time to install the kde plasma desktop sudo apt get install task kde desktop press enter and this could take a little while depending on your internet connection it's 3.8 gigs it's also going to download some applications for us that we need then it's going to extract it i've had it take 20 to 35 minutes to finish up on a slow chromebook on a faster device with a decent internet connection it might do it a bit quicker and enter it's going to start downloading everything we need for that desktop and by the way you can actually use the chromebook while this is going on if you'd like to we can go ahead and start watching a youtube video it's really up to you so it's really not going to notify you when it's finished up but if we don't have a bunch of errors right here this one's looking pretty good we can actually start the kde desktop right here by just typing in start kde with no spaces press enter now if for some reason you do run into an error when you're trying to start kde you will have to input one more command in terminal this is going to fix the x11 window just wanted to put that out there also leave this in the description below and while this is starting up you can actually right click here and auto hide shelf if you'd like to and the desktop is now going to start go with external display and here it is we now have the plasma desktop up in the top right hand corner we can add some widgets very easily add widget i'm going to go with a few here we'll do the application dashboard i'll add a clock and i'm going to find the cpu monitor and we can move these around by long clicking on these and this is going to be our application launcher so from here you can see that there are a few applications that did pre-install with this we do have firefox uh where is it right here go ahead and launch this we now have a full-fledged image editor here and you can always install this directly through the terminal on chrome itself but have this desktop is actually pretty awesome it does install some really great apps like the app store and from here we can install different applications so if we go to application we can find games uh super tux cart something easy to install real quick and if you don't have internet while you're in the linux desktop it might have prompted you in the background to put in your chromebook password to allow internet just check down here mine's already set up so it's good to go i do have internet through the kde desktop we'll let this install we'll go back and find some different applications we have developer tools education graphics internet multimedia sn player we'll install that too so give this a little time to finish up and once everything's finished installing we can actually find it from here super tux cart see if it starts up this was just something quick and easy to install so yeah even easier to run linux games will work on the now chromebook can also change the look of the desktop configure desktop we have different wallpapers you can actually download new wallpapers or add your own images i'll just go with something that looks like this and if you really want to change the look of pretty much everything here we can go to our applications system settings look and feel we can go with dark there's also some themes that we can install through here we'll apply this breeze dark just kind of give us a dark look to all of our widgets but yeah that's pretty much it and in order to exit this desktop we'll just go down to the taskbar terminal close terminal out we're back to chrome and we can use this like a chromebook without interfering with anything that's on the book itself so yeah that's pretty much it for this video really appreciate you watching i thought it was a cool little trick i figured i'd go ahead and do a quick tutorial on it i know there's some people out there that'll get some enjoyment out of using this but overall like i mentioned this is not a replacement for a real linux laptop or a desktop just something fun to mess around with on your chromebook everything you need to know is going to be linked in the description below even the commands we used to get this installed but like always thanks for watching\n"