Building Chromebooks out of Netbooks

[Christine Shock]

I have a question. We are a Google Apps for Education school. Unfortunately, the contract IT people here before me purchased 300 Acer and Asus netbooks...(which I would trade for chromebooks in a heartbeat). My problem is, is there is no money for new hardware (don't ask) and I need to be able to filter any device I send out with a student (new law in Colorado). So a possible solution to this problem is to convert my netbooks to chromebooks using chromium vanilla. I have already tested the chrome filtering for apps (works great even on non-chromebooks)

So what are the pitfalls here? All I need these netbooks to do is access the internet, use google docs, etc. I understand the problems with Java apps...(and that's my plan b is to load windows 7 and chrome and hide IE through gpedit.

Thoughts, ideas,warnings???

[Mike Frysinger]

can it be done ?  i think so.  will it be smooth ?  i'm not sure.  ChromiumOS tends to have rough edges when it comes to being deployed on hardware other than official devices.

-mike

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[Chris Masone]

To be clear, you cannot create "Chromebooks" out of unofficial hardware running Chromium OS.  These devices will not be running Google-signed code, they will not be provide the Verified Boot guarantees of Google Chrome OS, and they will not auto update unless you do a bunch of work to set up a parallel infrastructure for managing and pushing your own updates to these devices.  These are all core features of Chromebooks.  I also don't know if Chromium OS devices can be managed centrally like Chromebooks can.

[Jonathan Schmid]

I've created ChromeOS running machines ("Chromebooks") on old Fujitsu tablets, so it's possible but not for the faint of heart. Driver issues abound and it will take some deep fiddling.

They don't auto update and they are not able to be added to the management system (I tried and was told no by Google support).

But it did breathe a little life into old equipment. I would never use them as primary machines, but they work great as a loaner pool when a computer is in the shop.

So can you do this - yes, probably. Is it a good fit for your situation? probably not.

Jonathan

[Christine Shock]

Jonathan...thank you...It would be nice if Google would consider releasing a "education only" version of the Chrome OS that could be used by schools with older equipment...that way we could rehab our older equipment and still use it, while we begged, borrowed, or stole money for new...

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Christine Shock

Technology Coordinator

Eagle Ridge Academy

3551 Southern Street

Brighton, CO 80601

303-655-0773

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[Chris Masone]

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Jonathan Schmid <jona...@jonathanschmid.com> wrote:

I've created ChromeOS running machines ("Chromebooks") on old Fujitsu tablets, so it's possible but not for the faint of heart. Driver issues abound and it will take some deep fiddling.

No, you haven't :-)

Chromebooks run Google Chrome OS, boot only Google-signed software (when in verified mode) and automatically update themselves.  They can also be managed using the Google Apps infrastructure.

Devices running Chromium OS don't do any of the above and, as those are core features of Chromebooks, I think it's important to acknowledge the difference and not confuse the two.

 

They don't auto update and they are not able to be added to the management system (I tried and was told no by Google support).

But it did breathe a little life into old equipment. I would never use them as primary machines, but they work great as a loaner pool when a computer is in the shop.

So can you do this - yes, probably. Is it a good fit for your situation? probably not.

Jonathan

On Monday, June 3, 2013 12:44:30 PM UTC-4, Christine Shock wrote:

I have a question. We are a Google Apps for Education school. Unfortunately, the contract IT people here before me purchased 300 Acer and Asus netbooks...(which I would trade for chromebooks in a heartbeat). My problem is, is there is no money for new hardware (don't ask) and I need to be able to filter any device I send out with a student (new law in Colorado). So a possible solution to this problem is to convert my netbooks to chromebooks using chromium vanilla. I have already tested the chrome filtering for apps (works great even on non-chromebooks)

So what are the pitfalls here? All I need these netbooks to do is access the internet, use google docs, etc. I understand the problems with Java apps...(and that's my plan b is to load windows 7 and chrome and hide IE through gpedit.

Thoughts, ideas,warnings???

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[John Siddle]

I have today finally loaded Chrom OS onto an Acer Aspire One series ZG5 from Hexxeh Chromium OS.

I used the method indicated in zzsethzz blog spot.

I tried various of the 15 images that are offered and none worked until I tried the CR-48 Option 13.

It went thro like a dream.  Just two or three messages on login screen but nothing to say it had worked or failed.   But rebooting the machine up it came.

I got a message page which said the machine failed the MFRs Machine ID and that auto updates would not work... but who cares the machine is brill. Far better than when it was a windows XP or Ubunto machine.