 Okay, today I'm going to talk about my Chromebook here. It's an Acer Chromebook R11, and I'm going to talk about the pros and cons in my opinion on this. So basically, six months ago, I felt like my tablet, which was a cheap Samsung, it was like a 2014 model, around 200 bucks back then, it's just getting slow. It was no longer, even though I had a signage mod on it, I couldn't upgrade to a newer version, because it was unofficially supported, because Samsung, they make nice hardware, but they're a lot like Apple in some ways, and although you can't unlock the bootloader, you've got to go through headache to do it, and then, so it's not, yeah, I wouldn't buy Samsung products anymore, just because they make it so difficult. Some companies make it very easy to unlock your bootloader, like I've had two motor roll-of-phones, and it's basically, yeah, here, just run this command and put this key code, and you're good to go, you're voting a warranty, but whatever, I don't care about the warranty. Anyway, in the Samsung tablet, sorry, getting slow, even if I formatted it and started from a fresh system, it just seemed to be running slow, I really only used it for reading comics and other things before bed, so I was kind of in the mood for something new, and I mentioned to my wife, I said, hey, you know, I know it's like nine months away, but for Christmas, I would like maybe a Chromebook. I was very iffy about it, I was like, is it gonna be locked down? Because one of the biggest things I hate about Android is the way everything's compartmentalized, which a lot of people go, oh yeah, you know, everything's in its own little sandbox, and that's a whole other topic. I think, oh, well, that's all BS. I don't think it's really security, it just makes things a headache. It's like you can do what you want to do, but you gotta jump through hoops. But if you run it in an Android device, it's running the Linux kernel, so really nothing's really stopping you, just some things you gotta jump through hoops to do. But if you have a Linux kernel and you have root access and you have room for storage, you can always churroot into Debian or some other Linux distro, as long as it supports the architecture. So I was very iffy about the Chromebook, and I knew going into it that you could install Prutan, which is a churroot. And again, if you have root access and it's running the Linux kernel, there's really nothing you can't do for the most part. So I was like, okay, I asked my wife, I said, I know it's nine months away, but I might want one of these for Christmas. And she goes, you know, Father's Day is in a couple of weeks. I said, hey, yeah, it is. So I went online, I looked at a bunch of Chromebooks. Again, I picked the Acer R11. It was basically the cheapest one that does a tablet mode, which is big for me because I'm mainly going to be using this as a tablet. The same exact laptop that doesn't have the touchscreen and the convertible option is, well, like $150. This one is normally $300, but I found a refurbished one for $200. And then a week later, I found that Walmart was selling the same exact model for $225. So I rather have spent an extra $25 and gotten a brand new one. Plus instead of white, it was like a blue, which is a little different. But still, refurbishers, I formatted everything when I got it, so. And it's working great, and again, I paid extra for the tablet mode it's got. One of the confusing things about buying this, I mentioned I didn't script this. I'm just winging it. When you buy this, it's very confusing because you go on Amazon and they have this listed under the same Chromebook that doesn't have the touchscreen. So you'll go to one thing, you'll have a big range of prices, and then you realize, oh, some have the touchscreen, some don't. You got to be careful when you're ordering. Some actually are running Windows, I believe. They had Windows models, so I guess they weren't Chromebooks, but it was the same model by Acer. And they also had ones where this one has 4 gigs of RAM, which I didn't want to go below 4 gigs of RAM. They had 2 gigs of RAM, and I think they also had a 3 gig RAM model. And these days, I wouldn't go anything under 4, I mean, you can survive. But just for regular use, especially if you're running Chrome as a web browser, because that thing can be kind of a system hub. And that's how this goes. But for the price, it's great. I love it. The hardware's pretty nice. Let's talk about hardware a little bit. My biggest concern, the biggest drawback I see as far as the hardware, again, this is not a beefy machine. This is a $200 machine, $300 you buy it at full price. But I don't expect it to be this monster of machine. I just want to web browse, run commands. And it does pretty good. For that, I don't need a lot of system resources. I could do video editing on this, which I'll talk about in a little bit. But you're probably not going to want to. Biggest drawback hardware-wise is it doesn't really have, well, it has function keys. So it has a row of keys at the top, which are your back and forward and browser refresh, full screen, tiling mode, your volume, your contrast, all that stuff. And those are your function keys, but they're not labeled as function keys. But if you also have a search button, where your cap lock button would normally be, which brings up a Google search, obviously, in the Chrome OS. But if you were to hit, see, it's one of those things you can't do when you're thinking about it, I think if you hit the search key and one of those, they actually function as function keys when you're in Chrome. So my first guy, first of all, there's only 11 of them. So there's not an F12, which in your Chrome, I always used F12 to get into the developer tab to use the console and other tools there. I'm like, well, how do I get into that? I get Control Shift I, which I've now gotten in the habit of doing even on systems where I have a full row of function keys. Another thing is, it doesn't have your Windows key, which on my regular Linux desktop, I use that as my modifier key in I3 to run pretty much all my commands. And I do run I3 on this, which I'll talk about again in a moment. I just changed my modifier key to be Alt. And it would have been great if they just put, because the Control key and the Alt key are both very huge because they didn't make space for that Windows key, that modifier key there. I wish they put a modifier key there. Just like a menu, make it a menu button that functions like that. You didn't have to obviously put the Windows logo on there, but the Google logo, I don't care what logo was on there, but it would have been nice to have a button there. But as far as running it as a regular Linux system, super-duper easy to do. First of all, when you get it, you hold down a couple of keys and you can look this up, look up directions for Crouton or just Chrome OS into developer mode, because that'll be your first step for doing something. You hold down a couple of keys and restart it, while holding down those keys. It asks if you want to go in developer mode. And then it wipes the system clean, then reboots into Chrome OS. But now you have a root shell. And by root shell, when you're in Chrome OS and you have Chrome open, you hit Control Alt T and it opens up a shell in your web browser. And actually it's a, I guess it's a Chrome shell, but you type the word shell and it gives you a regular Linux shell. But once you go into developer mode, now you have root access and you can use Pseudo and you're running a Linux kernel. So you can set up a churroot, which you could do manually and I've done 100 times. But there is scripts out there. There is scripts. There are scripts out there called Crouton and there's different versions for different interfaces, desktop environments. But basically it's very simple. I installed Debian and by default I did the XFC desktop environment because that's what they had loaded in the script there. But then I went and changed the startup file or copied it and created my own for I3 because I3 is the desktop environment I use on my desktop. So now if I want to use a full version of Linux I want to use Debian, all I have to do is Control Alt T in the Chrome. It brings up a shell, I type shell and then I type in sudo enter churroot, su-enter churroot. Again, I'm like, if this isn't a tutorial just look up Crouton for Chrome OS and you'll find the instructions there. And right there in the Chrome web browser I now have a full Debian shell, which I can run apt aptitude and so whatever I want from the Debian packages and run them if they're shell commands. As far as a GUI interface you can start Xorg by typing something like start XFCE. I forget the exact command once you install it and it depends on what desktop environment you want. But I change mine, I just type I3 and it loads I3. And this is in a churroot which a lot of people I've done lots of videos on it in the past, but just be clear, a lot of people don't, I guess it might just be your definition of it. People go, oh, can I run Debian natively? When you're running in a churroot it's not a virtual machine. A lot of people think it is. Basically, you're using the original operating system Chrome OS kernel, but you're using the Debian system. You're really using Debian. You're just using, the only thing that's not Debian in there would be your kernel. So you are running natively. It's not virtual, it's not a virtual machine. But once you do that, it will open up your desktop and then you can use, I believe it's control, shift, alt, and then on the top row you have a forward and back key and you can flip between your desktop, your Linux desktop, whatever you choose. Like I said, I run I3 and your Chrome desktop which is very simple to do. I also, also, so newer Chrome books are able to run supposedly natively Linux applications. Mine is not one of those ones that are supported. Not a big deal. I just use my churroot there. I mean, for the most part if I'm gonna use this, I use the shell unless I need to open up GIMP. Like I did use GIMP when I was on vacation the other day. Load that up, load up GIMP. Did what I needed in GIMP and then I just exited out of the churroot. And since it's not a virtual machine you don't have an extra layer of virtual processes running. You're only running the programs you're running. So by default you have a shell running and then your desktop. So you will have the Chrome OS desktop and Chrome running there and I3 or GNOME or KDE or whatever you choose to run. So, I mean, you are running two things at once but I've had no problems and as far as using that gooey desktop interface the only problem I've had besides having to change my modifier key to alt because there's no Windows key is when I'm doing dual screen up there is HDMI out on this and I'll hook it to a second screen when I'm at work and the mouse track pad works fine. But if I go to use the touch pad it's off because it seems to think that the full resolution of the two screens translate to one screen. So if I click on the far left of the screen it's right. If I click in the middle of my touch screen it actually goes to the middle of the two screens and if I go to the far right of my touch screen it's all the way, it clicks all the way on the far right of my second screen. And I'm sure I can reconfigure Xorg to acknowledge that properly but I just use the touch pad. For the most part I'm not even in that desktop environment. I stay in the Chrome OS but I'll use the churroot shell if I need to use some Debian packages that aren't available in Chrome OS. Now as far as running commands in the shell in Chrome OS you can install Android applications on Chrome OS. And if you watch my videos on Android that I did recently I installed Turmux which is a great shell environment for Android applications. I have that installed as well. Now you might say well if you have a full Debian churroot why do you need Turmux? Well the main reason I use Turmux and not just the Debian shell is because it's very easy to use that to interact with the Chrome OS environment. For example if I wanted to copy something like I showed you a lot of scripts where I would copy something and then run a command that will create a tiny URL for me or do some other things. The since Turmux has those APIs that I talked about in the previous video I can run a script that will open up the web browser in Chrome OS or grab the clipboard or put something in the clipboard and a lot of just interacting with Chrome OS Turmux makes that very simple where when you're in the churroot there if you use crouton your download directory is shared so you can copy files back and forth but if I wanted to grab something from the Chrome OS clipboard and use it in the churroot besides actually pasting it it's a little more I don't know if you could do that I'm sure there's probably a way but Turmux makes it very easy to interact with Chrome OS so I actually use that more than I do the Debian churroot the crouton churroot because again Turmux has a majority of the commands that I already need. One of the drawbacks though again it's an Android application which are usually pretty restrictive and now it's on Chrome OS which has some other little glitches so I can in right now there seems to be a bug in Chrome OS I believe it's a bug I can use Turmux I can install the API and run the Turmux storage which allows me to access the storage so I can access my download folder on Chrome OS but when I stick an SD card in I can't access the SD card from Turmux I think I might be able to read but I can't write or maybe I can't do anything so if I want to use scripts that I interact with stuff on Chrome OS I have to either interact with it in an accessible folder such as downloads or I have to use my churroot if I want to access the SD card which is annoying if I have a script that's going to both download some videos I either have to download to the internal storage and use up that space which I have 32 gigs on here but I also have a 32 gig or a 64 gig one of the two I think it's a 32 gig SD card I much rather put them on the SD card I can't do that with Turmux just because of again that whole Android where it tries to compartmentalize stuff and it's just a pain in the butt and then once you get on and should work Turmux can access your SD card I believe on an Android device but for some reason there's some sort of running the Android applications in Chrome OS it's even more restrictive and that's that again is one of the biggest drawbacks of Android is the way it's like this application is here this application is here you want them to communicate which program should be able to do you can't that's a whole other I can go on and on about that so there's a drawback like that now again once you're in the true I can do everything that I need to do in Debian Turmux makes it easy to interact with those shells with the shell commands and the Chrome OS let's say you don't want Chrome OS at all let's say you just want to run Pure Linux it's one of the first things I got again you run the few keys you go into developer mode you now have root access at that point you can change your boot device and actually the SD card I have in here that I use for storage is actually a bootable SD card that actually has I think I put Linux Mint on there I put it in there I booted to it just to see if I could I wasn't really planning on doing that unless I really really hated Chrome OS and to be quite honest even on my desktop Linux I'm either in Chrome or the shell and I have those two things in here and again this whole video I'm not even going to get into how people feel about Google how you know whether Chrome or Firefox or Chromium is better that's not this debate here just talking about the machine I should have said that at the beginning anyway I booted off that that SD card and it loaded up Linux Mint no problem and then I went to type on the keyboard and the keyboard wasn't working could have something to do with this machine when you go like this it disables the keyboard when you go into tablet mode so it might be something I'm sure almost positive the keyboard could be working but I went there I'm like keyboard's not working but I was able to boot in the Linux if I ever need to do that I can figure this out I never went into it again because I don't need to because again whether it's Android Chrome OS or a router if you have a Linux kernel running and you have a root shell and place for storage that you can put a file system you can run whatever whatever offerings you want as long as architecture is supported I use Debian which supports pretty much every architecture that's commonly used so even if it's a router I can get Debian running on it as long as I have root access if it's an Android device if I have root access I can get Debian running on it if it's a Chrome OS I can get Debian running on it if it's some other Linux desktop or some other version of Linux I can get Debian running on it as long as I have that root shell and that's all I really care about again that's one of the reasons I love Linux so much and not that Linux is the only thing you do that obviously I'm sure BSD operating systems can do this current is going to do this or however you want to say it if it's running on this kernel which so many devices do and you can get a root shell and again and you have storage space for a file system you can run your favorite distro on that and for me it's Debian and I have all the packages again if it's an ARM device as long as the packages are open source so they can be recompiled for ARM you know for proprietary stuff you may not be supported architecture but the 99% of what I use in actually almost 100% besides Chrome which may not be supported by ARM architecture which this is not ARM architecture here I'm pretty sure it's a let's see you name Shae yeah it's an x86 64 bit processor and it runs great I have not had any issues the biggest issue I've had as far as like I think it's because the machine could be a little sluggish but I don't notice sluggishness when I use it is when I am in the Chrome browser in Chrome OS and I go to click on links lots of times I go click a link and it thinks that I'm holding like I just tap it but it thinks that I've been holding my finger there and you know when you hold your finger there it brings up the context menu but I'm just clicking but I try not to use the touch screen as much as possible I'm a keyboard guy and as long as I'm sitting at the desk I use my keyboard as much as possible and I have Vimium installed as a extension for Chrome so to click on links I usually just use Vimium which I just hit F it gives each link you know letters I type in those letters and it opens the link so that's the only real thing I have no problem with scrolling and stuff loading anymore then I mean it's a two to three hundred dollar machine actually a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollar machine whether you get the touch screen or not and it runs fine for me I have not had a gun sluggish on me I've used Gimp in it you could probably run something like Caden Live if you want to do video editing and if you use proxy files so they're small files you probably edit halfway decent because I've done video editing on a netbook ten years ago almost ten years ago that only had like a quarter giga ram so this is four so anyway that being said don't think that this is like a two thousand dollar machine it's a two hundred dollar machine some people will frown upon any low powered machine like this and for me and I think most Linux users you understand the importance of using software that's efficient so don't expect to be playing too many games on this although I've done a lot of what's called 3JS 3D stuff in the browser on this that works fine I've played Doom on it but don't think you're going to be playing any brand new triple way game on this it's just not well I don't know maybe it would work I haven't tried but there are people out there who if you haven't spent two thousand dollars on your machine have a cooling rig you know then the machines you know crap to me to be able to use a low powered machine efficiently just shows your skill and again there are things probably you could run Blender on that actually let me let me try that real quick so I just type i3 in my shell here once I go into the chair route and type in my super secret password for route access i3 then I will run do I have Blender installed? you guys see here while I type that that that's great okay open up my shell and sudo apt install Blender password yes it's installing my bet me is you're you're not going to be doing any heavy duty graphics work in Blender on this but you know sometimes I'll make intros for my videos there's basically you know a flat plane with some 3D text and lighting on it should be a little bit of that stuff no problem you know I'll let this go in a future video I'll just show you some of the things on here so this video is mainly talking about it and again it's a great low price machine whether you're going to use Chrome or not because again you can boot into Linux I have a little keyboard issue but I'm sure that there's forums on that and you can get the keyboard working and even if you're going to use Chrome OS using Crouton or even making your own churroot or even if you don't need root access you can always just install Turmux and 99% of what I do can be done in Turmux and interacts with the Chrome OS for the most part besides the whole storage thing no problem so you can have scripts that open up the web browser open up other applications and that's it so yeah as long as you know what you're getting and you're not expecting more this is a great thing for 200 bucks I personally think it's worth it besides the whole I get some people hate Google I understand why and I mean you can remove Chrome OS if you want but the Chrome OS itself once you go into developer mode again a Linux kernel and a root shell for me that's what I need on any device and I'm happy so thanks for watching please visit filmsbychrist.com there's a link in the description be sure to check that out you can search through all my videos from this channel and my second channel I apologize my house is a little echoy I've got tile floor but I just need to get this video done I thought this was a good spot to do it thank you for watching and I hope that you have a great day