Installing Linux on the Acer Chromebook R11

Posted on 2018-10-23

Requirements

• Acer Chromebook R11
• Internet connection
• Flash drive
• Screwdriver

1. Enable Developer Mode

• Power off the chromebook.
• Press esc + Refresh + Power to boot into Recovery Mode. The chromebook will boot to a white screen that says "ChromeOS is damaged or missing".
• Press Ctrl+D to enable Developer Mode, then follow confirmation steps.
• The chromebook will reboot to a white screen that says "OS verification is OFF". This is Developer Mode.

2. Disable Write-Protect Mode

• Power off the chromebook.
• Unscrew the back cover and remove the write-protect screw, then screw the cover back on.

3. Flash Firmware

• Power on the chromebook, sign in or browse as guest, then press Ctrl+Alt+T to enter crosh. Type "shell" and hit Enter.
• Enter the following command and choose option 3.

cd; curl -LO https://mrchromebox.tech/firmware-util.sh && sudo bash firmware-util.sh

4. Download GalliumOS

• Enter the following command to download GalliumOS:

curl -o galliumos.iso https://galliumos.org/releases/3.1/galliumos-3.1-braswell.iso

• Plug in your flash drive and identify it using "lsblk". It is *very important* to get this right.
• Unmount your flash drive with "sudo umount -fq /dev/sda", replacing "sda" with the name of your drive.
• Write GalliumOS to the flash drive, replacing "sda" with the name of your drive:

sudo dd bs=1M if=galliumos.iso of=/dev/sda ; sync

• Wait until writing is complete (it may take a while).

5. Install GalliumOS

• Reboot with the flash drive inserted. GalliumOS should boot automatically.
• Once GalliumOS boots to the desktop, click the "Install" icon.
• Follow the instructions to set up the installation.

That's it.

You've successfully installed Linux on your Chromebook.

For a more in-depth guide on installing GalliumOS, visit the GalliumOS wiki:

GalliumOS wiki

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This work is licensed under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license.

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