Dell Chromebook 11

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.
Reason:
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Talk:Dell Chromebook 11
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The Dell Chromebook 11 (and newer chromebooks in general) features a "legacy boot" mode that makes it easy to boot Linux and other operating systems. The legacy boot mode is provided by the
SeaBIOS
payload of coreboot. SeaBIOS behaves like a traditional BIOS that boots into the MBR of a disk, and from there into your standard
boot loaders
like
Syslinux
and
GRUB
.
The instructions for getting Arch Linux to work on this machine are similar to the
Acer C720 Chromebook
, with a few differences.
Installation
First enable legacy boot / SeaBIOS from the developer mode of Chrome OS. Then install and boot Linux as you would on a traditional x86 BIOS system.
Enabling Developer Mode
See the
Chromebook page
.
Patching SeaBIOS
This article or section is out of date.
Reason:
The link to the patched SeaBIOS is dead and no archived copy of the file exists. (Discuss in
Talk:Dell Chromebook 11
)
Warning
This may screw up the RW part of your firmware! If this happens, you must use a ChromeOS recovery stick to reset it.
The version of SeaBIOS that ships with the Dell Chromebook does not work properly, and therefore you must patch it in order to get it to work.
Open a crosh window with
Ctrl+Alt+T
.
Open a bash shell with the
shell
command.
Become superuser with
sudo bash
Download the patched seabios.cbfs from
[1]
[
dead link
2024-10-12—HTTP 404]
, and save it to Downloads.
Patch SeaBIOS with the following commands:
# cd ~/Downloads
# flashrom -r image.rom
# dd if=seabios.cbfs of=image.rom seek=2 bs=2M conv=notrunc
# flashrom -w image.rom -i RW_LEGACY
Enabling SeaBIOS
See
Chromebook#Boot to SeaBIOS by default
.
Installing Arch Linux
Continue by following the
Installation
guide on the
Chromebook
page.
Post Installation Configuration
For information on general Chromebook post installation configuration (hotkeys, power key handling ...) see
Post installation configuration
on the
Chromebook
page.
Touchpad Configuration
Edit Xorg touchpad configuration file
Add the Xorg touchpad configuration below for better usability (increases touchpad sensitivity).
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-cros-touchpad.conf
Section "InputClass" 
    Identifier      "touchpad wolf cyapa" 
    MatchIsTouchpad "on" 
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" 
    MatchProduct    "cyapa" 
    Option          "FingerLow" "5" 
    Option          "FingerHigh" "10" 
EndSection
If you want to remove the "Right Click" behavior from the touchpad from the bottom right area (you can still right click with two finger clicks), you should comment out the following section from
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
#Section "InputClass"
#        Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
#        MatchDriver "synaptics"
#        Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
#       To disable the bottom edge area so the buttons only work as buttons,
#       not for movement, set the AreaBottomEdge
#       Option "AreaBottomEdge" "82%"
#EndSection
Hardware
Locating the Write-Protect Screw
Visit
the Dell Chromebook 11 page on The Chromium Projects
.
Removing the back of the laptop
This video
describes the process of removing the back of the Dell Chromebook 11.
Known Issues
Touchpad right-click not functioning in X11
If the "Right Click" behavior of the touchpad is not working or it frequently fails to register left mouse clicks, try using the alternative X11 touchpad driver
xf86-input-mtrack
AUR
.
Unable to boot into Linux after exhausting battery
This is due to the 'dev_boot_legacy' flag being stored in volatile memory, and so being lost when the power runs out. This can be solved by enabling
booting to SeaBIOS by default
.