Getting GroundCrontrol running on my Dell Chromebook 13 took quite a bit of trial and error, research and but finally got it to work. So I figured I would try to post some steps in one place.
Chromebook Developer Mode
Start Chromebook recovery: Press and hold Esc + Refresh + Power. At the first recovery screen Press Ctrl D (Developer Mode) and continue recovery, your drive is wiped and a fresh chromeOS installed. **DO NOT use the debug mode option during this process
Install Crouton and Xfce Ubuntu
Open chrome and install the Crouton extension: https://goo.gl/OVQOEt
Download Crouton installer: https://goo.gl/fd3zc
Open a shell (Ctrl+Alt+T, type shell and hit enter)
Type in shell:
sudo install -Dt /usr/local/bin -m 755 ~/Downloads/crouton
sudo crouton -t xfce
sudo startxfce4
Install Python 2.7 and OpenGL stuff:
You should now have an Ubuntu Gui desktop and you should be able to open terminal by clicking an icon. open terminal and install this stuff :
sudo apt-get install python
sudo apt-get install pip
sudo apt-get install mesa-utils
sudo apt-get install mesa-common-dev
sudo apt-get install libgli-mesa-dev
Install Chrome
I could not download anything in the default Ubuntu browser, so I installed chrome via command line:
sudo mousepad /etc/apt/sources.list
Mousepad text editor will popup with sources.list. Save this line to the end of the sources.list file:
deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
Terminal commands:
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
sudo apt-key add linux_signing_key.pub
sudo apt update
sudo apt install google-chrome-stable
Download and Extract GroundControl Files
Chrome is now installed, you will have to look for it in the application finder…
Launch chrome and download save and extract Ground Control somewhere:
https://github.com/MaslowCNC/GroundControl/archive/master.zip
Install Kivy and other stuff
In terminal do a change directory command to be in the GroundControl folder ( where you saved and extracted GroundControl):
cd yourpathtogcfolder
Once inside inside the GC directory, run this command:
pip install -r requirements_linux.txt
(This install routine was the only way I could get the correct version of Kivy to install)
Then run GroundControl:
python main.py
As soon as I had it all running I figured I would do a reboot just to freshen things up…While rebooting , somehow I managed to disable Developer mode in the ChromeOS and subsequently wiped my drive. So dont do that. Do read the read the Crouton wiki regarding safeboot and backups.