So I had a chromebook once (and regret selling it, it was a great device) and I vaguely recall having some of the issues you describe.
I got around it by installing linux onto an sd card, and booting the sdcard. At the time, this was a new thing since Tegra graphics werent in the mainline kernel yet, and it was really fun/inspiring watching and interacting with a keen developer who brought the fire to the people.
Maybe also a solution for you:
https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=12185
I appreciate the thoughts/suggestions!
My days of mucking too much with my computing environment are likely over, though. I'm attracted to whatever hardware gives me a reasonable Linux for next to zero effort, beyond which I can add a few sacred thingies like tmux, curl, lua, and homegrown scripts.