lazy web: I got a free chromebook, a 2016 model (specifically an HP Chromebook 11 G5 EE (TPN-Q151)).
I have never touched a chromebook before now, and I'd like to use this thing to play videos out the HDMI port.
Any suggestions for how I should do that? Like, upgrade the OS version as much as it goes and keep it mostly stock? install a linux on it? Some combination?
Ideally I'd like to just be running VLC on it
EDIT: Corrected above to HP Chromebook 11 G5 EE
I'm going through the MrChromeBox guide and now it wants me to type the following command, by hand, into the keyboard, like some kind of caveman:
cd; curl -LOf https://mrchromebox.tech/firmware-util.sh && sudo bash firmware-util.sh
I did it manually, and it didn't work
(it turns out enabling developer mode wiped my wifi settings, so I was offline)
I fixed that in the GUI, and tried again
it didn't work because I made a typo
I fixed that and tried again!
and it failed to do anything because it turns out this is one of the chromebook models where you have to physically disassemble it to enable writing to the UEFI
WHICH MEANS I HAVE TO POWER OFF
AND TYPE THIS MONSTER AGAIN
okay so the way you disable the firmware write protection:
1. open the case
2. remove one screw from the motherboard
2. close the case
they ran a trace from the !WP pin of the UEFI flash chip to a mounting hole of the board. If the screw is present, it shorts the pin to the case, grounding it, and now the firmware can't be overwritten
Remove that one screw, and you can write again.
I'm not sure how much this is brilliance vs madness, but WOW
fun write protection story:
So back in the day when I was a Poor Kid In The 90s, I had a subscription to some computer magazine, during the period where they were full of tear-out adverts for all the online services. Compuserve, Prodigy, Earthlink, AOL, and so on.
I got a roll of address labels and each month I'd stick one on each card, and those companies would mail me FREE FLOPPY DISKS
and I'd just wipe and reuse them.
But AOL, the most reliable floppy mailer, either got wise to this or further cost-optimized their massive-scale floppy mailing operation: They started using 3.5" floppies that didn't have a read-write slider in them. This means they always appear as read-only
But one day I'm at the library using their computers, because I didn't have internet at home yet.
And I go to save some files from Netscape Navigator, and DONK, THIS DRIVE IS READ ONLY and I'm like "oh no... I brought one of my AOL disks, and I haven't stuck tape on it yet!"
So I go over to the nearest librarian desk and ask if they have some tape.
Immediately the librarian narrows her eyes, suspiciously. Why does this 10 year old child (who is mysteriously in my quiet Kids Section during school hours, on a school day) want TAPE? Are they going to do some kind of defacement of the library or books? are they going to hide RUDE SIGNS in the dark corners of the Westerns section?
She asks why I need it, and I explain I need to make the disk writable.
okay I give up at opening this on my own. I took out all the visible screws, spudgered some clips, and it still isn't opening. I'mma check a video or a guide or something...
*searchy searchy*
NINETEEN STEPS?!
That was the wrong model. This guy got me there: I was missing some clips and being too afraid to break it
I've been reliably informed that this is the specific screw I need to remove on this model.
(all the other motherboard screws are smaller and black, this is the only bare metal one)
also forgot to mention: I was wrong about the model, it's HP Chromebook 11 G5 EE not HP Chromebook 11 G8 EE.
I don't know what the difference is, other than screws being in completely different places
Any suggestion on what linux variant I should stick on a 10-year-old chromebook that's only going to act as a glorified VLCbox?
It's a Celeron N3060 @ 1.60GHz with 4 gigs of ram.
@foone 10y old - definitely Debian with whatever DE you like, I went for KDE on a similar intel Chromebook. It works perfectly.
On older (and ARM chipset) Chromebooks it's harder because there are a lot of driver issues, and it becomes a challenge of building your own kernel, installing blobs like late 90s - too much hassle for little gain these days. Turns out PostmarketOS covers those nicely and works with a lot of them, including mine. Literally everything works.
nth-ing Debian. I have a 2015-era Chromebook that I flashed with SeaBIOS back then and I recently(ish) put Debian on it when Ubuntu stopped supporting it. It works fine.
(It's one of the early netbook-rebadged-as-Chromebook models with an *actual hard drive* so I'd been using it as an audio player at work pre-Pandemic.)
@foone As somebody who's gone through everything you're doing with an Acer Chromebook 11, I found I like Alpine, because it just works, and it's really lightweight.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
@jpm @foone more convenient but it would break the intended security model of "you can trust the machine if it's out of your sight for up to 5 minutes" which affords some protection even against evil maid attacks!
The idea is that it takes at least 5 minutes to remove the screw and reassemble. For newer machines, the not-quite-a-TPM controls write protect and requires you to physically press the power button once a minute for five minutes to achieve the same guarantee.
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