LX1 Chromebook?

(One word of advice before you do anything read the text below because it doesn't describe success!)

The new version of Chromebook (Samsung Series 5 Chromebook) is out and apparently it's much better than the initial ones.

While thinking safety and security I myself am a bit torn. Is storing my data somewhere in the world wide web actually more or less secure? After all it will get backed up and save me hassle with unreliable HDs and SSDs and however web is web... whatever you save there can be accessed by other people. A lot of trust to put in Google.
I am less bothered with having to be on-line all the time in order to have a fully working machine. After all I am on-line all the time even if it's just through my mobile. Which BTW can serve as an access point should the need arise.

But then again... Do I really want to buy something which (apart from some minor set-backs) is actually worse than my LX1? Or it would be if I could find a system which works as quick and is hassle free (see windows and their never-ending security updates).

I have already tried Android and it is a no-go.
ChromeOS is hardware tied and as such can't be compiled.
There is the open source ChromiumOS project. however at this point www.chromium.org tells me that one of the preliminary requirements is that I have a 64-bit system for performing the build  and that 32-bit systems might be supported down the road. Oops. Another no-go.

I've decided to give the pre-built USB ChromiumOs a go.
Pretty painless process of creating the USB for this and...

Empty screen with only "Error 22" nearly killed me.

After a  few seconds I've realized that I have no partitions on this laptop any more as I have removed them in the process of preparing it but have not created any fresh ones.
Google and yes, grub error 22 seems to be telling something the lines "you've lost your MBR"
 but that should be spelled as exactly "Grub Error 22" not just "Error 22".

Ok, lets see. Reboot from my live gentoo USB and create one big empty partition.

no paths and I'm not a root there so need to use full paths.

> /sbin/fdisk /dev/sda
Command (m for help): p

Ok it is empty. Nothing under the "Device Boot  Start   End..." line.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
     p  primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
     e  extended
Select (default p): p

Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1

First sector (2048-125663999, default 2048): 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-125663999, default 125663999): 
Using default value 125663999

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 13: Permission denied.
The kernel still uses the old table.The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
Syncing disks

Riiiight... Is this an error? Looks like it but I doubt it.

 /sbin/fdisk -l

shows the partition created.

reboot.

Right, that helped. No error any more. However the laptop will not boot from that USB.
Apparently this Dell does not support GPT (GUID Partition Table) and the USB is made that way.

There is a way of copying the files to the disk, but it'd still keep the GPT and render the entire drive not bootable.

Initializing the USB to MBR desn't do anything simply because the USB is being created as GPT! So it WILL reinitialize your USB anyway.

Newer version of Hexxer's ChromiumOSes is a no too. Lime that is. it's GPT based as well.

Back to gentoo it seems...

But then I've stumbled upon Chrome OS Linux.

The site says:
Release notes
This is the stable release of Chrome OS Linux with Tumbleweed repository for rolling updates and better hardware support.

Featured software in Chrome OS Linux 2.0.1115:
- Linux kernel 3.3.4 NEW!
- GNOME 2.32 desktop environment
- Experimental GNOME Shell desktop environment
- Google Chrome 20.0.1115 web browser NEW!
- Google Talk Plugin 2.8 NEW!
- Google Music Manager 1.0
- Google Picasa 3.0 photo manager
- LibreOffice 3.4 office suite
- GIMP 2.6 image editor
- Wine 1.3 Windows emulator
- Cheese 2.32 webcam app
- Pidgin 2.7 instant messenger
- Dashboard with social toolbar
- Control Center
- and much more!

This really sounds exciting. Lets see if it runs on LX1.

Android on LX1

Forget it. I mean there are a lot of posts on how to do it. But the latest version is this and it's marked as deprecated.

No wonder. It's a 2.2 made in 2011. Hardly exciting, and even less for a Latitude X1 owner. First problem: it's not able to run ipw2200, so no wifi.

There's only a handful apps coming with the system, and I could not make myself try and plug the cable to see if there's more. Reason for my laziness? It's slow on LX1.

Maybe if someone made a port of 2.3, or 4.0 (wishful thinking) it'd be good. But other than that it's just not very usable. 

A couple of photos from the operation.

Having access to another Windows machine I use Universal USB Installer by Pen Drive Linux. Amazing little app with so many options for installation of various different systems on your stick, your head will spin. Makes the process really easy:

Boot screen somewhat similar to lots of things ;)

After having first three options failed, I chose Debug mode and found out that the mount will not work for I have linux partitions with filesystem which apparently android doesn't like and is waiting for and "exit" or in non debug mode any key.

After that apart from mentioned before ipw2200, everything else was more or less recognized.

Waiting in anticipation...

And there it is :) Boo... no service ;)

I liked the fact that it showed me correctly what my battery status is and when it will die (in my case in 8 minutes ;) But if you look at this dialog you'll notice that the lowest choice ends below the limits, and frankly there's no easy way to move there, which in case of longer menus is a problem, simply because you won't see those hidden choices.

In case you wanted to try it's good to know which keys mimic the android buttons on mobiles:
 MENU -> menu key
 BACK -> Esc key
 HOME -> windows key

 Last one, some info:

Sorry for the quality of the photos, made with my mobile :P

Having written all of this I'd like to thank people involved in creating ports to other devices, keep up the good work folks! Users of small old laptops, like mine, are counting on you!

My disk has died...

Yeah, sad but true, the nice device I've fitted in my LX1 had for some reason ceased to be. And it could not be revived. Anyway, the entire process of getting a replacement was pretty painless even though a bit time consuming (mostly because of the wait.) I just had to file a form on the supplier page, and send the disk in it's original packaging (!). Reminder for future: Never toss any of those away while your device is still under warranty. They then send it to the producer and some time later I got a brand new SDD. Not having enough time to fiddle with gentoo I've decided to give two other systems a go. Ubuntu (Gnome is way too slow for my machine! I thought KDE was resource consuming, but gnome even in 2D just stalls it). KUbuntu (for some reason Ubuntu isn't able to correctly map my keyboard. It acts as if I had no shift keys! And I've found painfully quickly how big of a problem it is when I tried to type: "/". I could maybe live without shif upper-case actions - caps sorts it, or even without "@", but pipe and slashes are a no go!). Then I tried to get the preview Windows 8 version on, but it refused to install simply because of this bug. I'm not a huge fan of windows anyway so I dropped it. The good thing I've learned during that process is making a USB installation. More on this soon.