Laptops Running Zorin Linux on an old Asus C302 Chromebook

Sharing my experience of running Linux on an old Chromebook.

Last year around this time itself, I got a used Chromebook from this forum. I was a bit apprehensive about it, didn't really need another laptop, but had always wanted to try a Chromebook. I had also done some reading and found that if I didn't like Chrome OS, I could install Linux on it. The device being sold also looked pretty impressive. It was an Asus C302c. It had an aluminium body, a gorgeous touchscreen, and had very good reviews regarding build quality.

I got the device in June and used it for a while. Chrome OS was... Chrome OS. Highly locked down, barely any software you could install. There was play store but most mobile apps don't work well in a laptop form factor. I tried installing firefox by enabling developer mode, but it was slow, slow as in it couldn't run youtube videos. After the initial phase, once the novelty wore off, the device just went into a corner. I kept thinking of installing Linux, but developed cold feet because there were warnings saying it could brick the device.

Finally, around November, after the device hadn't been touched in months, I decided to go ahead. I downloaded Gallium OS, removed the write protect screw, wiped the device, and installed Gallium. Everything went smoothly and it worked right away. No tweaking required.

However, I soon discovered that development had been stopped on Gallium. It was outdated and quite buggy. The touchscreen didn't really work, as in, it just worked like a touchpad. It was useless. Screen rotation was also gone. And since Gallium had been abandoned, there was no hope of anything improving. The device once again got relegated to a corner, being taken out only occasionally when I didn't feel like using my PC and my main laptop was being used by my wife.

Finally yesterday I decided to go ahead and replace Gallium with something else. I first tried Lubuntu. While it worked, it wasn't that good. I immediately started facing issue with app installation and the look and feel wasn't appealing. Within hours, I decided to replace it Manjaro with Cinnamon. It looked gorgeous and was smooth. Unfortunately, once again, I couldn't get the sound working. So I finally went ahead installed Zorin. And I finally hit jackpot.

Zorin looks Gorgeous, completely modern look and feel, despite being pretty lightweight. Sound wasn't working, but I found a script which I ran and it worked, it hardly took 5 minutes. Auto rotation also works in tablet mode. Unfortunately it turns the screen upside down, but it's still usable. Just rotate the screen opposite of how you want it, lock the orientation, then use. Touchscreen works like a touchscreen, not like a touchpad. I can tap and scroll, and it doesn't move the mouse cursor.

Above all, despite having only 60 GB of storage and 4 GB of RAM, I hardly feel much lag. It's of course not the fastest experience, but it's perfectly usable, much more than a Windows machine on 8 GB RAM. I also have about 43 GB free space after installing some basic applications.

So after dragging my feet for almost a year, I finally converted it to an actual usable laptop.

Thanks @Rajiv Sri for the great device.

parpel said:

Have you encountered anything noticeable about it?

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No. In fact, the max volume with this driver is lower than what I used to get on Chrome OS.

parpel said:

Also what about the internal mic? Does it work at all?

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Unfortunately haven't needed or tested.

Would like to add, the setup has been relatively unstable. Not sure what the issue is, but every couple of months, the laptop stops booting and then I have to reinstall or troubleshoot.

fixt said:

Here are the steps to activate a quirk that fixes the problem (SDHCI_QUIRK2_CARD_ON_NEEDS_BUS_ON).

Create the file /etc/modprobe.d/sdhci.conf

Code:

echo "options sdhci debug_quirks=0x4080000 debug_quirks2=0x919" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/sdhci.conf

then update inittramfs

Code:

sudo update-initramfs -c -k $(uname -r)

To check that the quirk was loaded on boot you can execute this:

Code:

cat /sys/module/sdhci/parameters/debug_quirks
cat /sys/module/sdhci/parameters/debug_quirks2

the output should be different from 0

Hope this helps.

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Thanks for this. I have done this. Let's see if it makes the installation stable. Will use it a few times over the next few days to find out.

btw, just for the record I had to run command to fix the boot error first. I'm just mentioning it here so that other people can find the solution as well. Most content on the internet says run fsck on /dev/sda1 or /dev/nvme0. But since my chromebook has mmc, the path was mmcblk1 and not sda or nvme.

My chromebook has soldered memory, it shows up as mmc

6pack said:

mmcblk means sdcard? I've only seen that notation on sdcard mounts.

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