Someone gave me a Hisense C11 Chromebook and I’m wondering if there’s absolutely anything I can do with it. It seems like a piece of junk and the Linux stuff I’ve seen for Chromebooks specify that they don’t work with the ARM processor. Is there any distro that would work on it? Any other ideas about how to repurpose it?

Note: I don’t have direct access to an Ethernet cable/router for setup. Also don’t have the most technical knowhow.

  • EugeniaEnglish
    2•3 months ago

    There’s nothing you can do with that one I think, for two reasons:

    1. MrChromeBox’s firmware doesn’t support this model. That’s the guy’s site that tells you how to unlock the bootloader and install the new firmware on it, that allows you to then install another OS.
    2. It only has 2 GB of RAM. For a better online experience with any modern Linux, you need a minimum of 4 GB. You could install though something like Kodi, or librelec, or some game emulation distro instead of a desktop OS. But without #1, you can’t do that either. That’s a landfill laptop AFAIC.
    • @[email protected]
      6•3 months ago

      Man, imagine how hard people worked to make sure that perfectly good hardware would turn into a useless paperweight one day.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•3 months ago

        It’s fucking crazy how much work goes into shitting out thousands and thousands of slightly different models of android phone and tablet and chromebook. Slap together a board design based on buying two trays of some SOC. Open up the Android source, slap some NDA drivers in, build an image, burn it into a production run. Don’t bother saving your changes, these devices will never get an update. Two weeks later, change out the whole design for a different chip, repeat.