Installing on a chrome book

[Mazate]

Does installing mint as the exclusive os on a chrome book require any special steps or is it like installing on any other computer?

[cogier]

I know this can be done, but it depends on which Chromebook you have. Some have '86 processors and others are ARM chips. Any new operating system will need to match the processor.

[Mazate]

It's an Acer C720 series chrome book which, according to acer's website, has an intel haswell microarchitecture processor. That would be '86 if I'm not mistaken?

[mountainhick]

I just did it a couple weeks ago onto a c720 2848. There are several methods to choose. It was a bit confusing to me. I don't need the dual boot with chrome nor the Linux OS running within a browser window (shell), but found a method to just install it on the hard drive and boot into it from developer mode through seabios.

I failed several times trying different things before success, but here's what finally worked for me:

I used a version available customized for the chromebook (the mint cinnamon version here: https://www.distroshare.com/distros/category/16/ Downloaded the Linux Mint version and loaded the iso onto a bootable USB stick using USB image writer from my desktop Mint menu.

This Mint selection does not have adequate installation instructions, there are better instructions with his ubuntu versions. BUT... the web page he refers to with info how to get into developer mode then boot to USB did not work. I found a youtube vid from a kid who is very difficult to understand, but the subtitles and terminal commands did the trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWXO61_v_xo This got me to where I could boot to the USB stick, run Mint and install it.

So once installed, it runs really well, but booting into it is a little strange:
-Power button
-Brings up "OS verification is off" screen ...
-Hit crtl + L to go into seabios
-esc
-enter 1 and it boots to Linux mint.

Works very very well and is fast

Oh, I also installed it on a new 128gb ssd drive.