Hello! I just went through the process of getting PopOS onto a chromebook. It went pretty smoothly and appears to be functioning which is great news. However the drive is soldered to the board, there are no slots for a second drive, and it’s only 30gb in size.

Depending on how my friend wants to use it this may be fine (like if it is going to be a glorified browser). I’m trying to figure out a good way around it though. My current thought is to get one of those really small USB keys and basically use it like a semi permanent hard drive.

Any thoughts on potential other solutions, or suggestions for USB keys that would work well for this? Is there anything about Linux/Pop that would make the USB solution a bad idea? Or maybe a good beginner friendly distro with lighter requirements than Pop that still works well with chromebook hardware?

  • Colonel Panic@programming.dev
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    4 days ago

    I’ve tried something similar - but usb sticks (i.e. flash memory) have limitations, when transferring larger amounts of data (images, video) it takes forever to write and it is no good experience. also the small form factor keys tend to overheat and become abysmally slow (esp. sandisk ultra fit are practically unusable).

    maybe an old ssd in a $10 external case is a better option, even if it’s not as compact