[Swlug] Fun with Chromebooks

[Rhys Sage]

I have a Chromebook. I bought it in a fit of cheap-arsedness about 5 years ago. Since then it has been the bane of my existence. Well, that and perhaps Chromium.
Anyway the story of that Chromebook was that the native Chrome apps were just as awful as most of the Android apps. As such it was pretty much only capable of web browsing and that was all. So cue a bright idea - convert it into a straight Linux laptop. What I should have done was to put Linux on an SD card and left the SD card in the SD slot. But no. I had to gone one better and scrub chromeos off the system. That involved using a small screw driver as a spudger and opened the case then removed the write protect screw.
Deleting chromos was straightforward. Installing Linux was not and every attempt led to dismal failure. I tried reinstalling chromeos and that failed so I put the Chromebook in the shed to come back to at a future date.
Cue several future dates down the line. This is the latest. I pulled it out of the shed having discovered it when I moved stuff onto the new shelves I built in there yesterday. I ran across nothing but problems.
1. Google wanted me to download the recovery OS using a Chrome extension. I tried to add the extension to Chromium and was told it works on Windows only.2. I sought out a Windows computer and Chrome didn't have extensions and wanted to be updated then I was told that Chrome could not be updated for Windows 8. 
3. I did manage to get Chromeos installed on a USB memory stick and set it as a bootable stick. Then when I tried to get the OS to install, the pesky thing told me I didn't have chrome OS yet there it was - Chrome OS.
In the end, I just put the thing back in the shed. That has to be the worst purchase I ever made. The only way forward from here is to use it as a frisbee!

HWID: SNAPPY E25-B6C-52E-632-E5B-A62recovery_reason: 0x02 0x00
recovery button pressed
UbNu.raw: 60 10 00 00 00 02 00 00
UbSD.flags: 0x0003ec74
00 fe
ff
00
00 ff
ff 70
dev_boot_usb: 0
dev_boot_legacy: 0
dev_default_boot: chrome dev_boot_signed_only: 0
dev_boot_fastboot_full_cap: 0
TPM: fuuer=0x000a0001 kernuer=0x00010001
gbb.flags: 0x00000000
gbb.rootkey: a3343405a7a6b7738139034d21c00803930f5f49 gbb.recovery_key: 07e52a53cc24e98a21c80d13fe8556e380ff8a31 read-only firmware id: Google_Snappy.9042.253.0 active firmware id: Google_Snappy.9042.253.0 Please insert a recovery USB stick or SD card. TPM state: u=1 failed tries=0 max_tries=200|

Rhys Sage
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