chromebooks are good, actually

back to /blog bluesky

chromebooks (x86 ones, at least) have somehow become the last gasp of truly "ownable" computers. they run open-source firmware (which can be easily replaced with just a regular open-source uefi with coreboot), open-source embedded controller/TPM firmware, and have the portability + battery life that you'd expect from a modern computer. in that way they're really quite nice. plus, they can be had (new *or* refurbished) for like a hundred bucks.

if you've got a chromebook that you want to mess with, MrChromebox is the main person working on getting this all working. some worthwhile things to note:

• audio is quite often broken under linux
• many windows drivers for new devices are paid
• if your device has "Cr50" firmware protection, removing the battery will disable protection
• if you can't figure out how to disable protection on any device, shorting the SPI write protect pin works too

happy hacking!