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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLrIYGJnZ5Q

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.