Since Google is now actually selling Chromebooks, I think they'll forgive me for finally breaking down and installing Linux on my Cr-48. Several months ago, I used Hexxeh's Luigi firmware installer so that I could boot any distro of my choice from a USB key. But ever since then, bash was missing, even after several clean re-installs of ChromeOS, and trying the dev switch in both positions. My only command line option was crosh, which, of course, was not enough -- and made it impossible to follow a lot of system recovery recipes I've seen out there. That also meant that I couldn't automatically get upgrades; I had to download and flash them manually.
But I can't say that was really the reason that I finally wiped it clean and installed Ubuntu, though it certainly didn't help. Mostly, it was just that I missed having a for-real Linux desktop. After receiving my Cr-48, I sold my netbook; I do have Puppy Linux on my OLPC XO-1, but it's not my first choice for an everyday machine (although lots of fun!).
So, last night when I finally had some time to tinker, I first installed Kubuntu 10.4 (Lucid) from a USB DVD drive, then created a bootable Ubuntu 11.4 (Natty) USB key, because keys I'd prepared in OS X were failing to boot. So far, Natty seems to run pretty nicely on the Cr-48.
I'm feeling very happy to have a Linux notebook again!
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