Installing IGEL OS on a Google Chromebook using an IGEL UD Pocket - Part I

Written by: René Bigler, Citrix Technology Professional (CTP) & Nutanix Technology Champion (NTC) Chromebooks are great and powerful mobile devices. By default they run the Linux-based ChromeOS as its operating system. They are quite widespread in education because of their competitive pricing. Wouldn’t they also make a great mobile thin client, running on IGEL OS? Absolutely! I did some tinkering and was able to boot a Chromebook from a IGEL UD Pocket as well as convert it permanently by putting IGEL OS on the internal storage.

Disclaimer: Opening a Chromebook, altering the default firmware and running an alternative operating system might break your device, leave it in an unusable (bricked) state and will probably break the warranty – you’re doing this at your own risk! By default Chromebooks run their operating system (ChromeOS) in a protected mode, which is preventing alterations of their firmware, booting from external media and the execution of a lot of Linux commands in a terminal session. So the first step is to put the device in the so called Developer Mode. In this mode you will get full root access, including the ability to modify your Chromebook’s system files. Read the entire article on Rene's blog.