Keith Graham

I received my 128GB SSD from China for one of my Chromebooks for a little over 20 bucks. It took about 20 days to make it. I find that Orders from AliExpress make it to the East Coast pretty fast.
Here is the link to the item that I ordered: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32965273842.html
If the link has expired just do a search on NGFF 42MM SSD. You can buy them on eBay or AliExpress.
Before you begin you need to backup your Chromebook. This requires creating a bootable SD or USB memory stick. You need more than 2GB, but you don’t need too much more. The specs say 8GB, but I was able to do it with a 4GB USB memory stick. The instructions for installing the OS Restore app on Chrome is trivial and you can google how to do it.
You can then remove the dozens of screws in the back of the Chromebook, Including the one under the warranty sticker. The back pops off the help with the help of a kitchen knife. The SSD simply unscrews and you put in the 128GB SSD in its place.
When you start up the Chromebook it complains and asks for the recovery media. Plug it in and then Bob’s your uncle. It takes 15 minutes or so.
Put the 16GB SSD aside in case everything fails.
Now it’s time to install Linux.
CHRX.org has a script that you can run that does the whole thing for you. It lets you pick from half a dozen different Linux distros.
I decided on a full blown UBUNTU Linux install. The instructions on CHRX are a little screwy.
Chromebooks are running a simplified Linux and you need to get into the Chrome Linux. The easiest way is to use CTRL-ALT-T. Then you type shell and you get some instructions for logging in and a prompt. Type shell to get in.
The CHRX site says in the instructions to enter
curl https://chrx.org/ | sudo tar xzfC - /usr/local && chrx
It didn’t work for me. What did work was
sudo curl https://chrx.org/ | sudo tar -xzfC /usr/local && chrx
I am not sure that this is right. I did this late at night over the course of a couple of hours of false starts and re-dos. You have to learn a little Linux. The sudu command at the beginning means run as a supervisor. The dash before xzfC are instruction flags to tar which is like zip. The flags are case sensitive and I forgot to capitalize the C more than once. The dash on its own is a typo, I think. Taking it out fixed things.
You will have to watch while it messes with your disk. It wants to know how much disk space to use for Linux and I entered 72,000 MB. The first time I did this I tried to use all of the free disk space for Linux, but Chrome OS won’t run on the little that I left behind. You need leave behind a good chunk of disk for Chrome OS.
It takes a good while to get going. Reboot and Chrome will take 20 minutes to repair itself and format the new disk space that you left for it. Chrome will repair itself if you do things like this.
Get back in the shell and run chrx again, this time pick one of the Linux distros listed on the website.
I typed in
sudo curl https://chrx.org/ | sudo tar -xzfC /usr/local
to get chrx back again. Chrome erased the last one when it repaired the disk. I then typed in
chrx -d ubuntu
This gives me a good size Ubuntu installations, although it is missing some of the stuff I wanted. I know very little about Linux, but I was able to install gnome-software and gnome-tweaks after the installation in order to get things going. Google is your friend here.
You can choose one of the simpler versions of Linux that are sized for the 16GB disk. Then you can start adding to them.
Now when you boot your Chromebook you’ll get the screen complaining about the OS. Hit CTRL-D for Chrome, or hit CTRL-L for Linux.
I have been messing around with Ubuntu, trying to make it do some of the stuff that I do in Windows.
I like the little Chromebook. It is very light. It has a very long battery life. The screen is small and I had to bump up the default font sizes so I could see everything with my myopic 70 year old eyes. It runs Chrome and Linux very well with a snappy response, even with 2GB ram.
Now, if I can every get it to work with my Windows network, I will be happy. Google has offered no useful help in connecting to my four Windows 10 computers. I can see them, but I can’t connect. I would like to be able to print on a printer attached to Erica’s computer from Linux or Chrome, but so far there is no joy.