Background: I’m not “new” to linux, but this is my first year daily driving it. I have been running Mint on my main PC for a little over a year, and I love it.

My super old chromebook (Acer c720) has reached end of life. It is no longer supported by Google, and will not receive updates. I’ve toyed with dual-booting it to Linux in the past with Bodhi, but eventually it broke, and I ended up reverting to ChromeOS. That was years ago, and my patience/knowledge has grown, and I’m committed to switching.

So the other day I went ahead and pulled the trigger. I removed the write-protect screw from the Chromebook’s motherboard, and installed Debian 12. I really just chose Debian because I already had a flash drive with the ISO on it for a different project (rooting my Dreame vacuum). It also runs GNOME by default, and I had never used that, so I thought it would be worth a try.
Turns out, I didn’t mind GNOME, and I really loved the three-finger swipe to switch workspaces. BUT… The function keys on the chromebook that are used for changing the screen’s brightness don’t work. So I dove down the rabbit hole of trying to get those to work. Found ‘xbacklight’ and gave it a go. didn’t work, and I struggled with it for a few hours until I discovered that xbacklight doesn’t work with Wayland… So I attempted to disable wayland, and also made some other changes that lead to my Chromebook not completing its boot up… whoops. Every challenge is an opportunity, so I figured - why not explore some other distros, and see if I can’t find one that fits my needs a bit better?

Now the request: The hardware of this machine is OLD, so I am hoping to put something super light on it, but still be able to have a few features:

  1. Trackpad gestures (swapping workspaces, navigating firefox).
  2. Window snapping (left and right panes at least)
  3. I don’t care too much about how it looks, but I need to be able to map the function keys to volume and brightness.

I have been lurking on Lemmy for long enough to have watched all the memes/conversations about different desktop managers (GNOME/Xfce/etc) but I never really understood what the deal was, but now I am coming face to face with that decision, and I’d love some “professional” input!

Edit: the only “real” activities I will use this for is web browsing, terminal stuffs for my servers/other machines/homeassistant, and some note taking. So default programs can be SUPER minimum.

  • socphoenix
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m running arch on my Chromebook I followed the wiki for WiFi then ran the arch install command and set up xfce4. That worked with xbacklight and hot keys setup. I needed a script from mrchromebox to get the speakers working as well but everything else worked out of the box.

    • Nimrod@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      I’ll be honest, I’m a bit scared of Arch, but this might be the push I need to give it a go. What’s the worst that happens?

      Can you add trackpad gestures to Arch?

      • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        If you want a little bit of hand holding to ease you into Arch, Endeavour OS is a pretty smooth distro that makes the install and configuration easier.

        • Nimrod@lemm.eeOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          Interesting! Looks pretty slick. Might be a nice stepping stone into that world. This chromebook is so old that it could be a perfect playground for this sorta thing. I don’t have any important files/apps or anything on it that I’m afraid of damaging or being without. Thanks for the suggestion.

      • socphoenix
        1·
        1 year ago

        I had to use the script twice because I did something stupid the first time but honestly the worst case is you try again!