performance on samsung chromebook???

Install Arch Linux ARM on other devices.

performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby jayveesea » Tue Jul 09, 2013 12:47 am

i am curious about how arch is performing on the samsung chromebook.

what desktop environment are you using?

any features not working (web cam, etc).

how does the performance feel while web browsing (youtube video at 720p, etc).

how about hd video on vlc or similar? playing music?

thanks,
jvc
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Re: performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby flakedave » Mon Jul 15, 2013 11:49 pm

Hi there,

I'm using alarm via https://github.com/drinkcat/chroagh and I installed xfce.
For videos and webcam and web browsing I rely on chrome OS. All the rest is done with arch. I use chrome OS and arch as complementary OSs and it's been great so far, so many things can be done with such an inexpensive device!
More info on viewtopic.php?f=27&t=4016
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Re: performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby jayveesea » Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:06 am

thx for the feedback!

another user that was participating in the referenced thread had given me similar feedback. personally i am looking for a device that will perform well enough so that i would not have to rely on another os for my everyday computing.
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Re: performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby kmihelich » Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:58 am

It works great on its own running Arch alone; surprisingly well off of USB. A couple of us developers are running from a Sandisk Cruzer Fit, a nice mini drive that doesn't stick out far. The installation instructions will bring you to a nicely workable dual-boot system. Aside from some x86-only development tools I use, the laptop functions perfectly for me as a daily driver to keep up with tasks on the go, and the amazing battery life helps a lot with that.
Arch Linux ARM exists and continues to grow through community support, please donate today!
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Re: performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby doragasu1 » Tue Jul 16, 2013 6:44 am

I replied on a private message, but I'll also paste the reply (a bit extended) here for reference.

I removed Chromeos, and now I have only Arch in my Chromebook (installed in the internal eMMC). It works pretty well. Boots to desktop en 10 seconds, Chromium runs pretty fast, Libreoffice and Codeblocks run nice, etc. Unfortunately, forget about watching HD videos in Arch. We still don't have a working driver that allows doing it.

HD videos play nice in Chromeos. If you don't get rid of it (either by running Arch in a chroot, or by dual-booting), you'll still be able to watch HD stuff, but forget it otherwise. Outside of Chromeos, Youtube SD videos available in HTML5 also run nice in Chromium, but I could not run Flash based ones. I have not tested Firefox. Also it looks like some Ubuntu people got Flash semi working, but information is not clear, and I had not the time to investigate it thoroughly.

I also managed to get the webcam working without a problem using xawtv. It works smooth at low resolutions (e.g. 320x240), but making it fullscreen causes a very low framerate. Also I have not tested any video-conference programs, and I think there is no way for example to run Skype (as it is closed source). Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I have also a very annoying problem (I don't know if it happens only in my computer, but I think I read other user having also this problem). Since I removed Chromeos, sometimes the Chromebook randomly powers itself on. When this happens, sometimes it runs until battery is depleted. Other times I open it, and find it powered (the white LED is ON and the netbook is warm), but it doesn't respond. Screen keeps black and doesn't respond to the power button. You have to keep the power button pressed until it powers off and then it works again. This never happened to me until I flashed nv-U-boot and removed chromeos...
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Re: performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby WarheadsSE » Tue Jul 16, 2013 6:39 pm

I'm still dual booting, and I have flash working perfectly fine with the appropriate grab of /opt/google/ bits as necessary and /etc/chrome/defaults.
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Re: performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby kmihelich » Tue Jul 16, 2013 6:56 pm

You can also use Gnash from the repos to moderately good effect. It'll play youtube videos and some other flash content, but other things like Google Music and Pandora don't work with it. The pepper flash from the ChromeOS install works fine though, albeit using a good amount of CPU time.

I haven't seen much for power issues or random waking up. Using a more complete desktop environment that can manage power, sleep, turning the screen off, and all that is important though. I've also noticed an issue with DPMS power saving, which doesn't want to wake up the screen properly. After disabling DPMS, zero screen wakeup issues.
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Re: performance on samsung chromebook???

Postby flesh1911 » Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:29 pm

At least 720p videos are playing nice with mplayer and fbdev driver (-vo must be set to x11). Also, we can pass ffmpeg params for 2-threaded decoding in mplayer.conf. But xv seems to be broken, so youtube html5 videos are jerky (can we owercome this with custom chromium/ffmpeg build options?).
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