Check out our guide to the best Chromebook games for specific gaming app recommendations. Also, not all apps are optimized for a larger screen (they were built for mobile-first), so you might encounter some scaling issues. This gives Chromebooks access to more games, productivity options and other apps to make these machines more versatile, though the apps seemingly run via an emulator with mixed results. And if you need help using incognito windows, we have a guide for that too.Īndroid apps are available on all new Chromebooks. Chromebooks will be easy to set up if you already use those apps. This deep integration can be either positive or negative, depending on how you use a PC. These machines were primarily optimized for Google apps, such as Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive, however, every modern Chromebook now has access to the Play Store. Although you can log in to Chrome OS as a guest, we recommend you sign in to the system with a Google account to have the best experience. On samsung, you do this by putting a paperclip into the hole on the underside of the trackpad.Chromebooks run Chrome OS, Google's operating system, so they heavily feature Google's suite of applications (Chrome, Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc) and need a working Internet connection to get the most out of them. On the laptops, you have to hard-disconnect the battery. usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh -set_config /tmp/x usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh -save_config /tmp/x There are a few more steps to make sure virtual machines can be used. So you want to add disablevmx=off to the kernel command line. The magic kernel command line option is disablevmx.
Install this image in your favorite manner, either via update engine or usb stick. Googlers: I have USB sticks that you can use for this install. build_image -board=lumpy -noenable_rootfs_verification -boot_args 'disablevmx=off lsm.module_locking=0' You should update your sources, then build an image with (at minimum) the USE=kvm option, viz: To start, you're going to need an image that has the KVM modules. Please see the respective device pages for more details. It's known to affect:įor devices marked with a *, you might be able to restore support by hacking the firmware. Board Specific Notesīe aware that on earlier Chrome OS devices, the firmware contained bugs such that they locked VMX support during power on. That means you need to currently build a custom kernel yourself in order to get KVM support. This keeps the system secure.Ĭurrent Chrome OS systems all ship with KVM disabled. For all other situations, we disable VMX and lock the bits so they cannot be turned back on. If it is set to off, then VMX support will be enabled. When the Chrome OS kernel boots up, it will look for the disablevmx= option on the kernel command line. Otherwise, they'd have to resort to modifying the firmware and that's always a tricky proposition (make a mistake and you have a brick). This keeps things secure during initial boot, but doesn't lock out people from enabling things themselves in the kernel. This means that support is disabled, but it is not locked such that runtime cannot change things. The firmware on Chrome OS devices will clear the VMX bits during boot.
What we'd most prefer is to get this patch series into Chrome OS, so we have qemu as part of a "real" build.įWIW, this particular instance of qemu was built on arch Linux, lost, sadly, when my Air was stolen. The setup sounds a bit kludgy but works well for me nevertheless, we welcome improvements. Access to devices, where needed, is provided via bind-mounts.
It's a bit hard to get Qemu built in the Chrome OS build system at present, so I've got a directory containing Qemu, its libraries and BIOS files, and scripts to chroot to that directory and run Qemu. I have booted both Windows and different versions of Linux and the 9front version of Plan 9.
I've replaced my Macbook Air with a Chromebook, and run the standard Chrome OS software on VT01, and virtual machines on VT02. The Chromebooks with Intel processors are fast.