Installing Debian on a Chromebook

January 17, 2024

Problem

I have some old Chromebook lying down and I want to install Debian on it.

Solution

I started with installing UEFI Firmware on the Chromebook. In order to do that, I recommend creating a usb stick using MrChromebox.tech custom coreboot firmware following this guide

cd; curl -LO mrchromebox.tech/firmware-util.sh && sudo bash firmware-util.sh

Once that’s done, you need a usb stick to install Debian on. Get the usb stick and go to debian and install Debian on it.

Follow this guide for bookworm Once downloaded the .iso use below to copy it to the usb on a linux system:

cp debian.iso /dev/sdX

Then boot from usb and debian with gnome should be installed.

Debian / gnome tweaks

Couple of tricks in debian. Based on the resolution of the screen, one can set the scale to 200% in order to get more crisp fonts. The launcher button needs to be remapped to something else than the default.

In order to do that one should:

sudo touch /etc/udev/hwdb.d/mx-keys.hwdb
# in the file add:
evdev:atkbd:dmi:bvn*:bvr*:bd*:svn*:pn*:pvr*
 KEYBOARD_KEY_db=leftctrl
 # save and exit
 sudo systemd-hwdb update
 sudo udevadm trigger

in order to remap the launcher to ctrl key.