in order to get these images to even boot on your device there are some steps you need to do, below you can see all the required steps
Note. before getting your device to boot you might be interested in looking at device specyfic notes
Warning. this step will WIPE ALL YOUR DATA from you chromebook so if you have anything of value there, pls copy it somewhere else
on laptops
hold [esc]+[refresh] and press [power]/[lock]
on tablets
turn off your device and
hold [volume-up]+[volume-down] and press [power]
on older laptops
you should be booted into recovery screen
image source
in here you need to press [ctrl]+[D]
press enter to enable developer mode
on older tablets
you might see recover screen or black screen
press both [volume-up]+[volume-down]
navigate to top option (Confirm Dissabling OS verification) and press [power]
Note. on some devices with a black screen (but led on the side on) mentioned aboved for example lenovo 10e, the screen output is disabled there for whatever reason (the menu is still there though), but don't worry just press both [volume-up]+[volume-down] then press [volume-up] a few times then confirm with [power], after that screen output should be there
after doing this the device should reboot to this screen
you can wait 30 secs for device to continue automatically or go to developer options
and select to boot from internal disk
on newer devices
go to advanced options
and enable developer mode
after your devices finishes you will be able to enter tty from chrome os by pressing [ctrl] [alt] [->] or [ctrl] [alt] [refresh] or [ctrl] [alt] [f2]
Note. on the first boot screen there will be a button to enable debug mode, don't do that unless you know what you are doing since it's not needed to access the tty and may make doing it more difficult
if you are planning to set gbb flags right away you don't have to do this.
after enabling developer mode enter tty and type
sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 dev_boot_signed_only=0
doing that will enable you to boot from usb/sd card by pressing [ctrl]+[U] at boot menu
or chosing boot from external device on tablets (developer options->boot from external device)
or
you should have succesfully booted into the operating system 🎉
good job ❤️
Note. after first boot there are some commands you might want to run
well now that you've managed to boot the system you might want to install it directly onto the device especially if you used usb (usb for reasons has way slower read/write speed than sd card or chromebooks internall memory)
Note. but before doing it, we recommend you to set gbb flags on your device so when battery runs dry you won't lose access to your system
Disclaimer. when you install the content of thses linux images onto the internal storage (mostly emmc, in the future maybe sometimes nvme) of an arm chromebook, everything on the internal storage will be deleted and is lost and one should backup all data from the internal storage.
Tip. for information about the restoration process post install one can have a look here
- regular - the simplest one, will copy over content of medium (so the medium can be already preconfigured), system installed on your device disk will not be fully encrypted
- encrypted - your entire system will be encrypted, you will be forced to type password everytime you boot your device (not recommended for tablets since there is no on screen keyboard)
- dualboot - the system will be installed next to chromeos (in theory it can also be done agains any other linux distro or woa but why?). no encryption unless you fuse this guide with encrypted one.
- dd - this method flashes the image directly onto chromebook memory, while it's somewhat simple/fast, it introduces issues the other installations don't