ChrUbuntu

The $249 Samsung Chromebook is the first Chrome OS Device to feature a processor based on the new ARM Cortex-A15 design. Since most of the Linux-based operating systems already support ARM Architecture, it’s not that difficult to get this ARM-powered ​Chromebook to run Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, or other Linux-based operating systems.

Now ARM ChrUbuntu is available, which is ​a port of Ubuntu ​designed specifically for this mode. Installing ARM ​ChrUbuntu is extremely easy, just follow the steps below:

1. Start with your Chromebook off. Hold down the ESC and Refresh keys and poke the Power button. You'll boot up to the Recovery screen. Now press Ctrl+D (there's no prompt - you have to know to do it). It will ask you to confirm, then reboot into Dev-mode.
2. After entering Dev-mode, your Chromebook will wipe and then reboot into the out of box (OOB) setup screen. Make sure you have Internet connectivity but do not login to a Google account. Then use the Ctrl+Alt+Forward Arrow method to get a shell.
3. Login as user chronos, no password is needed.
4. As the chronos user, run:

   wget http://goo.gl/34v87; sudo bash 34v87

5. Press Enter to continue when you're prompted with some information about your Chromebook.
6. The Chrome OS stateful partition where your data and settings are stored is just short of 11gb by default, the script shrinks the stateful partition to make room for ChrUbuntu. You can choose to give ChrUbuntu from 5gb up to 10gb in 1gb increments. Once you've entered a number, your hard drive will be repartitioned. Then the Chromebook reboots, wipes the stateful partition, reboots again and shows you the Welcome screen you got when you first turned on your Chromebook out of the cardboard box.
7. Go through the Chrome OS setup process again until you get to the Google login page. You'll need to have a WiFi connection again at this point. Now follow steps 2 through 5 again. This time the script will see that you've already made room for Ubuntu and will start downloading the ChrUbuntu image and copying it to the SSD.
8. There are 52 100mb files to be downloaded. Each is compressed so the actual download size ranges from less than 1mb in size to 99mb in size. The total size of all the files is about 1gb compressed and 5gb uncompressed so the download and install will take awhile.
9. The script keeps track of which of the 52 files have been successfully installed so if you lose Internet connectivity, or the battery dies (you should be plugged in BTW), etc, just re-run Step 4 and it should resume where it left off.
10. After all 52 files have been downloaded and copied to the SSD, the script will make a few more updates to your Samsung Chromebook and then reboot.
11. You'll see ChrUbuntu start up! The username is "user" and the password is "user" if you need to make changes.
12. Right now, you're in ChrUbuntu but if you reboot, you'll be back in Chrome OS. To make ChrUbuntu the default, run:

    sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/mmcblk0

    (password is "user"). It should be possible to run this from ChrUbuntu or Chrome OS.
13. To make Chrome OS the default again, either turn off Dev-mode, or run:

    sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 0 -S 1 /dev/mmcblk0

It's hard to expect much from a $249 Notebook, but some recent benchmarks running Ubuntu on Samsung Chromebook show that this mode is not only inexpensive but powerful.
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