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Using a Chromebook for Web Development: Part 3

Angela Whisnant on August 10, 2019

I am writing this to update readers about the fix I have found for the Arm64 architecture issue I have been experiencing on my new-to-me, linux-ena...
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Julian Garamendy

Hi Angela,

Thank you for writing these posts. I'm also interested in setting up a lightweight linux dev machine, and a Chromebook sounds like a great idea.
I don't think I'll be trying this very soon, so I'm bookmarking your posts for the near future.

PS: Did you know you can group your posts in a series? There's a "series name" text field under "Additional Config/Settings".

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Angela Whisnant

I tried to use that option, but I must have done something wrong...☺️

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Angela Whisnant

A-ha! Fixed it! Thanks for the tip!

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Douglas Horne • Edited

I thought I'd add on to this, since I just installed the Linux Beta that was offered inside my Chromebook. I have an Acer 14 that I bought back in 2016. This is the exact model I have, in case you're wondering: acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX...

Install and Setup

I just clicked on the Linux Beta button I saw somewhere in the settings, and it was done in a couple of minutes. In case you don't see anything like that, here are some instructions: support.google.com/chromebook/answ...

After that, I went to the Visual Studio Code site, downloaded the debian version and clicked to install. No issues. Everything works as expected (including my extensions and sync settings)

Next, I wanted to install node and npm. Luckily, I found this article (medium.com/@jacoboakley/web-develo...). I just copy / pasted, and I was up and running.

All in all, this probably took me 15 minutes. I have been using the machine for about a week with no issues. Love it!

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drew gillies

I hadn't seen your posts but really enjoyed them. I set up my wife's arm based chromebook to code on earlier this year. I also used the same install of vscode. I noticed when I npm installed packages on my projects, I couldn't delete the files through the ui file explorer. Easier to motivate there in the terminal and run an rm -rf to remove them. I'm really glad you found that arm based software center. I'm going to try it out.

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Angela Whisnant

Thank you Drew...I’ve learned a lot, but still much more to learn about Linux for sure. Glad you found it helpful!