Funtoo Linux Installation on Chromebook Pixel 2015

Introduction

This article is a collection of thoughts, knowledge and procedures discovered while installing Funtoo linux on the Google Chromebook Pixel 2015. It is aimed to provide a concise explanation as well as a walkthrough of the components and steps required. However it will not go into the details of the applications or technologies, leaving that to external documentation.

Note: This is an ongoing effort, e.g Under Construction

Note: While installing this machine I first wanted to just wipe everything and install Funtoo, but decided to dual boot at first to see how it behaves, identify possible optimizations etc., before wiping the rest of the ChromeOS installation. That being said, I did remove the firmware protection and set the flags as described in #Setting seaBIOS as default boot option before setting out on actually installing anything.

Developer Mode

Putting the Chromebook in developer mode is a requirement. Also get accustomed to opening the shell and gaining root privileges. Note that changes to ChromeOS's root filesystem are not required for this, so no need to disable root filesystem verification.

Crouton

It was suggested that crouton is a viable alternative to installing a separate Linux distribution.

Dual Booting vs. Funtoo only

There are some differences in how to install the system for either dual booting with ChromeOS or removing it. Most notably, it is reported that if the "Signed boot verification" is enabled and ChromeOS is replaced with a different system, "...then your system might become corrupted on empty battery, resetting dev_boot_usb dev_boot_legacy to their default values, forcing you to recover Chrome OS..."[ Arch linux wiki ].

Preparing for Installation

Setting seaBIOS as default boot option

Note: This step is only required for removing ChromeOS and installing funtoo on the whole drive.

WARNING: This may damage your system, do at your own risk. You have been warned.

Preparing the hard drive

Preparing for Dual-Boot

Note: I already disabled "Signed boot verification", so someone needs to try this without touching the firmware to confirm that dual boot works. If you are running into problems booting, you can also consider running the official google kernel.