Translation(s): none
Models covered
Chromebook Pixel WiFi, Chromebook Pixel LTE
Overall Status
Core Components |
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Boot Standard Kernel: |
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LAN network card: |
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Detect hard drives: |
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Extra Features |
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CPU Frequency Scaling |
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Hibernation |
[?] (not tested) |
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Sleep / Suspend |
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Xorg |
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- OpenGL |
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- Resize-and-Rotate(randr) |
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Switch to External Screen |
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Touchpad and touchscreen |
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Modem |
[?] (not tested) |
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Wireless/Wifi |
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Keyboard's Hotkeys |
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Legend :
= OK ;
Unsupported(No Driver) ;
= Error (Couldn't get it working); [?] Unknown, Not Test ; [-] Not-applicable
= Configuration Required;
= Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware
Important Notes
Installing Debian onto the Chromebook Pixel is a slightly unusual affair due to its signed bootloader, but is quite straightforward providing the instructions are followed precisely. See #Installing Debian.
Each time you boot once Debian is installed you need to press Ctrl-L when presented with the white warning screen by coreboot. SeaBIOS will then be loaded, which will load Grub. This is unavoidable (without flashing a modified version of coreboot).
It's very important not to let the battery run completely out or you may lose all your data! See #Ensuring the battery doesn't run right down.
Installing Debian
Follow steps 1-9 of DaveM's excellent Installing Linux on the Chromebook Pixel (local mirror) guide. This will get Debian installed and working, except for the touchpad & touchscreen.
Once the basics are working, the easiest way to get the touchpad and touchscreen working is to use kernel 3.12 or newer from wheezy-backports (the linux-image package). The 3.12 and newer kernels work very well, though a little configuration is necessary for #Suspend and the #Touchpad and touchscreen to work fully.
Configuration
Display
The size of the screen isn't automatically detected, which leads to incorrect DPI assumptions. To fix that create a file called /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-monitor.conf containing this:
Section "Monitor" Identifier "<default monitor>" DisplaySize 270 180 # millimeters EndSection
Power Management
Suspend
For suspend to work reliably you need to add the following line to /etc/modules (source):
tpm_tis force=1 interrupts=0
Also note that if you have an SD card mounted it may not remount correctly after a suspend. You can force a remount by adding an executable file /etc/pm/sleep.d/10extraresume with the following (presuming the SD card is mounted at /mnt/sd):
umount /mnt/sd && sleep 1 && mount /mnt/sd
Ensuring the battery doesn't run right down
The Chromebook Pixel has a very unfortunate design bug where if the battery is completely empty it will not allow you to boot up an operating system other than ChromeOS, requiring a reinstall of Debian. This is because it the "Developer Mode" setting is battery backed, so is lost if the battery runs out, and it can't be set except in a running ChromeOS install. There is now a workaround to reset the flags, but note that "this process is also pretty annoying, but it's better than losing all your data."
It is therefore advisable to make sure the battery never gets to empty by forcing a shutdown when the battery level is low. You can do that with various graphical power management tools, or by creating an automatic shutdown daemon.
Touchpad and touchscreen
The touchpad and touchscreen both work well with the 3.12 kernel. However the driver doesn't load properly when booting, and needs to be reloaded once everything else has finished. You can automate this by adding these two lines to /etc/rc.local:
modprobe -r chromeos_laptop modprobe chromeos_laptop
This seems to be caused by this kernel bug, which is fixed in newer kernels.
Tap to click
If you want tap to click, you need to tell the synaptics driver about it. There will be graphical ways to do that in desktop environments, but an alternative is just to run these commands (e.g. from .xinitrc):
synclient TapButton1=1 # one finger tap is left click synclient TapButton2=2 # two finger tap is middle click synclient TapButton3=3 # three finger tap is right click
Keyboard
The keyboard works fine, but Google left out some useful keys (like delete and page up, page down, home and end), and made the key that is usually caps lock into a big "search" key (that reports itself as Super_L). One way to reassign them is with xmodmap, by adding something like the following to ~/.xmodmap and running 'xmodmap ~/.xmodmap' (e.g. from .xinitrc):
! Set Super_L (Search) key to be a Control key remove Mod4 = Super_L add Control = Super_L ! Set Left Control key to Mode Switch keycode 37 = Mode_switch ! Set PgUp / PgDown / Home / End to Mode Switch (Left Control) + arrow keys keycode 113 = Left Left Home keycode 114 = Right Right End keycode 115 = Up Up Prior keycode 116 = Down Down Next ! Set Mode Switch (Left Control) + Backspace to Delete keycode 22 = BackSpace BackSpace Delete
System Summary
lspci
lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller [8086:0154] (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) 00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 [8086:1e2d] (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1e20] (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 [8086:1e14] (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 [8086:1e26] (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation HM75 Express Chipset LPC Controller [8086:1e5d] (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:1e03] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller [8086:1e22] (rev 04) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family Thermal Management Controller [8086:1e24] (rev 04) 01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0034] (rev 01)
lsusb
lsusb -v | grep -E '\<(Bus|iProduct|bDeviceClass|bDeviceProtocol)' 2>/dev/null
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceProtocol 1 Single TT iProduct 0 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceProtocol 1 Single TT iProduct 0 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iProduct 2 EHCI Host Controller Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iProduct 2 EHCI Host Controller Bus 001 Device 003: ID 2232:1033 bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association iProduct 2 Chromebook HD WebCam (Bus Powered) bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association (Bus Powered) Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0489:e057 Foxconn / Hon Hai bDeviceClass 224 Wireless bDeviceProtocol 1 Bluetooth iProduct 2 Bus 002 Device 003: ID 05e3:0727 Genesys Logic, Inc. microSD Reader/Writer bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceProtocol 0 iProduct 4 USB Storage (Bus Powered) bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceProtocol 0 (Bus Powered) Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1410:9010 Novatel Wireless bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association iProduct 3 Novatel Wireless 4G bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association
USB Host controllers entries (without OHCI, UHCI, EHCI) are removed too.
Resources
Attachments
Some configuration files and sample outputs.
Useful Links
Credits
Pmsyyz for the photo of the Chromebook Pixel (CC-BY-SA).