gregriley.net

Chromium OS Running on Acer Aspire One

I have got the Google open source Chromium OS running on my Acer Aspire One netbook (the 8.9” 110 model that shipped with SSD drive and Linpus Linux)

I used a disk image and instructions available form http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/ I created a bootable USB drive using the mac instructions but I had a few problems with terminal reporting “unsupported operation” I got round this by using some instructions from the ubuntu site for the creation of a ubuntu usb boot disk The relevant bits are the diskutil list command to find the disk number of the USB drive and diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN where N is the number of your USB drive found from the previous command. My acer booted fine from the USB drive and I was able to log in using the username and password “facepunch” as listed in the FAQ once logged in I was able to setup my WiFi by selecting the appropriate SSID and entering my WPA password. with this done subsequent logins worked using my own google account details. My next task was to install the image onto the netbook SSD again following the FAQ Ctrl - Alt - T works fine on the acer to access the terminal allowing me to enter the /usr/sbin/chromeos-install command. Having done this I had to repeat the process of logging in to configure the WiFi. Everything seems to be working correctly and the computer goes from pressing the power switch to log on screen in approx 12 seconds a little longer than the google demonstrated 7 but still pretty fast, and after entering your google account details about 3 seconds for a usable browser window to appear. From the options menu you are able to set a number of pages to open at start up, so I have added me.comthe Apple MobileMe web interface so I can get straight in with access to my mobile me data, Mail, iCal, Contacts, iDisk etc. It is still in the spirit of the google chrome cloud computing idea but with an Apple twist, and without going the hackintosh route it is the closest thing I have to a Apple Mac netbook.