I spent yesterday (on vacation this week) making a full on, no dual boot, Ubuntu powered computer out of a Chromebox I was doing nothing with.
I was sure I bricked it a few times, but I eventually got it mostly working around 11 last night. Yay me!
Itās a proof of concept at the moment and my only upsetness about it was I had to use a Windows machine (yech!) to make a bootable usb thummy drive. Now that it lives Iāll upsize the drive space from 16GB to something more appropriate.
Aaaanyhoo, about software - who uses what on Linux to draw stuff?
I use Inkscape, Freecad, and OnShape (the latter being online accessed through the browser). Sketchup can be run on wine, so even though itās a Windows program, itās an option in Linux.
Itās the final product version of what was previously called my.sketchup.com which I"ve used quite a lot. Itās really convenient.
EDIT: Also, I canāt say enough good things about wine. I abhor Windows with a passion matched only by my love for making sawdust but I have to admit; being able to run windows aps in linux has been handy.
Asus cn60 āpantherā according to the label and the nickname Ubuntu gave it.
It does indeed have a cooling fan for the processor.
I put an extra 4GB of RAM in when I received it (in the car at the post office!) and ChromeOS was totally happy with it. I wish it used a standard 2.5" drive but itās MSATA. Not a whole lot of room inside to adapt it either. They stacked the wifi card on top of the SSD jack and put a power plug in the way of installing a longer SSD than the standard 42mm drive. I believe one could run the thing with only an external USB 3.0 drive (no drive at all inside) with the updated firmware. I wonder if the ādaughterboardā SD card slot uses a standard plug and socket. That may be a possible way to another internal SSD. All that said, a 42mm SSD was easy to find on Amazon and no more or less expensive than what else might work - other than a spinny-type hard drive.
I sound experienced, but I learned most of this yesterday.
Food for thought indeed. Maybe some sort of enclosure to allow air to circulate but keep dust out could be made. Itāll have to look cool. Maybe I can find an old radio or scope to gut.
Updates - FreeCAD so far seems to be running choppily and chunkily at the moment. I donāt believe itās the small SSD, but weāll see when the big one shows up. It also doesnāt like to boot right into Ubuntu, but I can start it from the shell quickly enough. Iām hoping those āfeaturesā resolve somewhat with the new SSD and new OS installation. I may reflash the ābiosā when install the new SSD.
I didnāt find an old radio or scope to gut, but I did find a Sunbeam radiant toaster at a thrift store. It looks like this one link!
Iāll have to look into that. I didnāt fiddle with it very much, but I recall Inkscape playing nice. FreeCAD doesnāt even like to start without making a fuss. I had LibreCAD running ok too.
I havenāt given up yet. At worst, FreeCAD isnāt happy with part of the Chromeboxās innards. At best, it will go away when I reinstall the OS when the new SSD arrives (evil pixies - the ones with wings are the worst). Iām thinking itās somewhere in between.
As long as it plays nice with Ground Control Iāll be fine.
The new SSD arrived yesterday and I installed it this afternoon. I tried FreeCAD again and it seems happier, but thereās a glitch where the cursor disappears when I select to draw a line.
LibreCAD is happy like before and I have a CAD app on my Chromebook which is also happy.
More importantly, I was able to install the Adruino app, all the goodies required for Ground Control and Ground Control itself and theyāre all playing nice in the sandbox so far.
Update Update - Iāve decided to throw my eggs in the Onshape basket for design. Itās works happily on my unaltered chromebook, and since itās browser based, I donāt need to physically move files around.
