As Chromebook and also with Linux an almost perfect work and leisure equipment

I have the Chromebook purchased (at the offer price of around 180) because of the known advantages: Very light, 10 hours of battery life achievable very quickly ready to work, without a sound, display not reflecting (albeit small viewing angle)). On the hardware side, there is not much to complain about: Keyboard OK touchpad with two click large areas, interfaces sufficient. However are SD cards with more than 1 cm to far out and the power supply is too bulky and heavy. The speakers I find amazingly good for the price and the size of the device. Depending on the system, there are some limitations that can be bypassed in part. I still want to work offline and with Linux, it is necessary to assess separately for both operating systems the CB3.

Benefits as Chromebook: start in a few seconds, after registration for 2 years 1TB storage space in the cloud (Google Drive), scary (literally ...) good connections with other devices of the same Google Account, standard programs for office documents, browser, mail client, Youtube etc. on board. Perfect surf machine for standard tasks in the network - if you trust the cloud. The keyboard is OK, the top row of function keys for ChromeOS is useful. The security seems to be high, when I think of the effort, the Chromebook impose another operating system. In any case, a new installation is compatible with all personal data to realize very quickly - if you have created a recovery medium.

Disadvantages as Chromebook: unusual operating concept: I work with various Linux distros, Windows 7 and Android - and miss a clear, familiar structure of the file system, ZIP files are awkward to unpack, without an Internet connection is working hard, the allocation of the top row of keys is smart, but unfamiliar. Dealing with different Google account I find confusing, especially in connection with the cloud storage My Drive. The Offline storage is limited - this is a micro-USB3 stick 64GB for just over 30 but not a big problem. The display is relatively strong viewing angle dependent and not easy to change the color characteristics. The touchpad is not reasonable to configure the pointer remains very slow. But most of all I miss the opportunity to install familiar programs such as Thunderbird, LibreOffice or Krusader.

So I dealt with the uploading of a Linux system on this special Chromebook. In principle there is the possibility to set up a dual-boot system or draufzusatteln a Linux system as a kind of alternative surface on ChromeOS. After extensive research and many experiments it is to me at first failed to get the dual boot solution up and running. With an additional installation of Kubuntu 12.04.5 LTS on crouton but I am very satisfied. Googling for "Chromebook Ubuntu crouton" fragrances unearth sufficient instructions. In any case you have installed with a few statements within about 20-30 minutes a second operating system and can switch with a few key strokes back and forth between the two - which is likely to be for everyone who worked with Linux before, feasible. The hardware is pretty much perfect controlled: keyboard, touchpad, speakers, WiFi, all work, including as is the ChromeOS. In addition, you can also change things that do not go otherwise. By installing kde-config-touchpad can finally adjust the mouse movements correctly and with the xgamma commands you can change the color representation of the display. Also Thunderbird, run Firebird and VLC - and all in an impressive speed! All tried out programs run subjectively comparable fast as on my desktop computer. Only problem was with me, that I re-install some of voice packets and the locale had to adapt in order to have everything in German. But otherwise: On Linux, I miss nothing except working function keys for brightness and volume! - Now I have solved the.

Meanwhile, there I succeeded, Ubuntu 14.10. to install in dual boot mode and again, I'm surprised at how much work right away. However, I had no sound, I got a number of error messages and the Chromebook woke up from the willingness not to, so I have all undone.

Anyone who applies a bit of patience, get a Linux-capable notebook that does silently and fix 10 hours without power for about 200. What more do you want?