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From hating to developing: My journey with Chromebooks

by Owen Zimmerman and Emmett Zimmerman | at Minnebar 18 | 10:20 – 11:05 in Louis Pasteur | View Schedule

I used to avoid Chromebooks, I thought I had no use for them. That is, until a couple years ago, when I managed to put windows on a Chromebook..

From then on, I have:

  • Helped organizations get more use out of their Chromebooks with Windows and Linux

  • Through a start-up I work for, Fyra Labs, and with the partnership of the Chrultrabook Project, we have created a tool to make it easier than ever to boot Linux onto a stock firmware Chromebook, and are implementing it into Chromebook images for our distro

  • Worked with PostmarketOS to port to mt8192/google-hayato

  • Connected with other Linux distributions in regard to bringing Chromebook support to as many distros as possible

  • Become the first person to boot an OSTree-based Linux image onto a stock Chromebook, seen here

In this session, we will discuss:

  • My journey with Chromebooks over the years, from how I got started to the topics above
  • Live demonstration of our tool used to boot Linux on Chromebooks
  • Demos of custom ROM (corebooted) Windows and Linux Chromebooks, and custom ARM and OSTree-based installs
  • 'Interesting' (to say the least) ways to use modded ChromeOS devices (Pi-Hole, drawing tablet..)
  • How you can get involved
  • Different ways to view non-standard hardware

While this may seem like a more technical session, I aim to make a simple, easy to understand session for people of all technical knowledge. To help with this, my little brother will be assisting me with live demos.

All levels

Owen Zimmerman

Hello!

I am Owen Zimmerman, a huge tech enthusiast specializing in Apple, Servers/Enterprise, Chromebook modding, RAID, Linux, and almost anything hardware related.

I currently attend Dunwoody College of Technology, and work in IT and Server assembly and administration. I am the Hardware Operations Manager at Fyra Labs, working with servers, non-standard hardware, and in-house products. I am very excited about this year's Minnebar, as I had a ton of fun at last years.

Emmett Zimmerman

Hi! I am a nine year old in fourth grade who likes tech and coding. I have made several projects on Scratch, and have coded a website with my mom. I like to do most my tech stuff with my brother Owen Zimmerman. I was interested in the Chromebooks at school, and because of my brother's passion for them, he gave me one, showed me how to put Windows on it, and I learned how to take them apart. My brother is part of a Linux startup company that runs Ultramarine Linux, and making ways to put it on Chromebooks. Their CEO even wanted to talk to me because i was putting Debian on my 12tb Plex server in my moms basement.

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