Codestarter Laptops/Acer C720 Chromebook

[Frank Hunleth]

I know several of you have had trouble with the Codestarter laptops. Even since Codestarter shut down, getting support has been difficult. I recently found out about an alternative way of installing Ubuntu Linux on the laptops that is much easier than the Codestarter instructions. See https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/ (the install instructions are near the bottom of the page). While it doesn't come with Scratch and many other programming tools pre-installed, those can be installed afterwards without too much effort.

If you are having trouble with a Codestarter Laptop, I'd consider looking into this. The only catch is that the installer will erase Chrome OS from the laptop by default. I've observed that few students use Chrome OS on the Codestarter laptops, so erasing it frees up disk space, but you'll want to keep that in mind.

Frank