Chrome OS advanced commands, settings, expert features

Chrome OS advanced commands, settings, expert features

All features described here where tested on a Asus C302 Chromebook, but should work on all Chromebooks, screenshots are from the Asus C302.

Recovery

Install new factory image for your chrome book
https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1080595?hl=en

Perform a Hard Reset

Go to settings select the reset section, you can do a reset or a powerwash.

Force-Boot Into Recovery Mode

If you’d like to reinstall Chrome OS and you don’t see the “Chrome OS is missing or damaged” message on your screen, you can force your Chromebook to boot into recovery mode.

First, turn off your Chromebook. Next, press Esc + Refresh on the keyboard and hold down the Power button. Your Chromebook will boot straight to recovery mode.

Enable Canary

First, turn off your Chromebook. Press Esc+Refresh+Power and, when the recovery prompt appears, press Ctrl+D and accept the prompt that appears to disable boot verification. When the Chromebook reboots, press Ctrl+D again. Please note that this will powerwash your Chromebook, so be sure all your local media files and screenshots are copied to Google Drive before you attempt this.

Once your Chromebook has ended up in developer mode and you log in, press Ctrl+Alt+T. This will get you to a "crosh" prompt. Type "shell" as mentioned above, then run "sudo su" to get to a root shell. Once running as root, run this command:

update_engine_client --channel=canary-channel --update

The first parameter ― "-channel=canary-channel" ― sets the channel to canary via the command line. The second ― "-update" ― will run a "ForcedUpdate" app version command, which will, as you'd expect, force an update without checking. It of course will take a while, so be patient. It's also not for the faint of heart, because the progress is shown as a long decimal between 0 and 1 instead of a percentage.

Revert back to verified mode

When you do end up logging in (you need to press Ctrl+D every time you reboot, of course, until the end of this step) you'll want to go back to verified mode for security reasons. So, when you are prompted to reboot when the update is completed, you'll see a prompt to hit the spacebar to disable developer mode. Press it, and you'll be back in verified mode.

Change Chrome OS flags

chrome://flags

Features I enable:

• Material design settings can be enable here (Enable all)
• Experimental Chromecast support for Video Player
• Simulated hardware 'Ok Google' features
• Tab audio muting UI control
• Print Pdf as Image
• Android Wallpapers App 
• Show Android Files app 
• Media Remoting during Cast Tab Mirroring

Manage google cast devices

chrome://cast/#devices

Tools

System Info Viewer

SSH terminal

Google ssh plugin

Do a barrel roll

When you hit the Reload button, the Chrome OS browser refreshes the active web page. Hold down Alt+Ctrl+Shift while pressing it, and you’ll see a much more entertaining effect.

Key commands

Press Ctrl+Alt+/ within Chrome OS to view a handy visual guide.

The Chrome OS keyboard is designed to be simple, but if you’re used to a desktop keyboard, you may feel like you’re missing several useful keys. The good news is that almost all of them can be simulated in Chrome OS by pressing the right key combinations:

Applications

Task Manager           Search+Esc
File Manager            Shift+Alt+m
Message Center        Shift+Alt+n
Status Menu              Shift+Alt+s
Stylus tools               Shit+Alt+p

Screen shot

Screenshot                Ctrl+Switch window

Screenshot region     Ctrl+Shift+Switch window

Screenshot window  Ctrl+Alt+Switch window
Print Screen              Ctrl+Switch Window

Monitor

Swap primary Monitor      Alt+Full screen
Mirror Monitor                  Ctrl+Full screen
Rotate Screen 90 degrees  Shift+Altf+Refresh

Useful Keyboard shortcuts

Caps Lock                Alt+Search (press again to cancel, or hit Shift)
Page Up/Down         Alt+Up/Down or Search+Up/Down
Home/End                Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down or Search+Left/Right
Del                           Alt+Backspace or Search+Backspace
Insert                        Search+>
F1-F12                      Search+1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/-/=

You can reconfigure the behaviour of certain keys from the Keyboard Settings dialog, accessible from the main Settings page. There’s also a huge number of additional shortcuts available.

Terminal (crosh)

Open a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T

Find debugging commands: help
help_advanced

top
tracepath
dmesg
route
uname
ping

Trace a network path (like traceroute or tracert):

tracepath www.google.com

To run standard network diagnostics:

network_diag 

References:
http://strawn-04.blogspot.in/2013/12/chromebook-howto-update-to-hidden.html

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo

Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 running with HiDPI and touch screen support

Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 running with HiDPI and touch screen support

See my previous post on how to install Ubuntu on Yoga Pro 2 for Ubuntu GNOME 16.10.

I think Ubuntu GNOME is the best flavor of Ubuntu if you are running in HiDPI mode 3200x1800. All screen captured images are at HiDPI resolution.

Touch support

Ubuntu gnome support for touch screen is pretty good on the desktop shell.
Chrome browser supports touch screen very well and much better than Firefox without any plug-ins.
The windows key on the screen panel works as the windows key on the keyboard.
Screen rotation is supported on the new gnome and disables the keyboard when the yoga is used as a tablet, side lock rotation button works to lock the screen in a certain rotation.

 What works

Almost everything works great out of the box, there isn't many changes you need to do.
UbuntuGnome ships with gnome 3.24 and will boot with full resolution HiDPI and touch screen support enabled

Screen HiDPI support

Brightness, resolution keys, option keys to turn off the screen  all work.

You can change the resolution in the settings to another resolution in case you don't want to use HiDPI, selecting 1920x1080 that should give you a good scale ratio on the Yoga Pro 2.

Camera, Sound, Keyboard, Sleep, Wifi, bluetooth, USB3

Camera, sleep, wifi, Bluetooth, USB3, side sound button up/down, keyboard background light works, Special Fn key mute, volume up, volume down, turn off screen, refresh, brightness up and down, menu key, keyboard light, air-plane mode, all work as expected.
The windows touch logo on the touchscreen works, small side lock rotation button works.

Fn key to show all screens works but it is a shortcut to Activities menu so you don't have to use the touch pad.

Does not work out of the box

The Fn key to disable track-pad function.

Tweaks to make some Apps work better with HiDPI 

Firefox, Google Chrome, Chromium, Cheese, totem work great in HiDPI.

Get chrome from google web site, or use chromium

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

Chromium/Chrome  supports the touchscreen better than Firefox if you wish to use it with the touchscreen Chromium is the better choice.

Skype for Linux Beta works great in Hidpi.

For Thunderbird  works great in Hidpi.
Firefox

Open Firefox advanced preferences page (about:config) and set parameter layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 2 (or find the one that suits you better; 2 is a good choice for Retina screens).
If you use a HiDPI monitor such as Retina display together with another monitor, you can use AutoHiDPI add-on in order to automatically adjust  layout.css.devPixelsPerPx setting for the active screen.

If you use the touch screen you should install Grab and Drag add-on to make Firefox more tablet friendly.

Reference for other applications on HiDPI

archlinux HiDPI documentation

Console

Configure larger font on tty console, leave all settings as they are, but for font select Terminus, and on the last one, where you can chose the size 16x32, and then reboot.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Ubuntu extras and tools

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

### DVD support
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

### Gnome utilities
sudo apt-get install adwaita-icon-theme-full vlc bijiben polari gnome-weather epiphany-browser p7zip-rar p7zip-full unace unrar zip unzip sharutils rar uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller htop dconf-editor gnome-backgrounds gnome-bluetooth gnome-boxes gnome-calculator gnome-calendar gnome-clocks gnome-color-manager gnome-contacts gnome-control-center gnome-dictionary gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome-logs gnome-maps gnome-music gnome-online-accounts gnome-photos gnome-session gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gnome-shell-extensions gnome-sound-recorder gnome-sushi gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-themes-standard gnome-tweak-tool gnome-weather frogr vinagre ghex chromium-browser gnome-todo

### Simple Games
sudo apt-get install gnome-chess five-or-more four-in-a-row gnome-klotski gnome-nibbles gnome-robots gnome-sudoku gnome-mahjongg gnome-tetravex iagno lightsoff quadrapassel swell-foop

### Video Editing
sudo apt-get install openshot openshot-doc

sudo apt-get install kdenlive

### pitivi
### As user run 
flatpak install --user http://flatpak.pitivi.org/pitivi-master.flatpakref

### Flowblade video editor
### https://code.google.com/archive/p/flowblade/downloads
### sudo dpkg -i flowblade_0.12.0-1_all.deb
### sudo apt --fix-broken install

### Install cinelerra
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cinelerra-ppa/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinelerra-cv

### Lightworks
### https://www.lwks.com/
### download and get the deb from the website
sudo dpkg -i lwks-14.0.0-amd64.deb
sudo apt --fix-broken install

### Other tools
sudo apt-get install clementine minitube picard

sudo apt-get install blender

### Image editing
sudo apt-get install darktable gimp krita pinta

### Run windows or other linux versions inside Ubuntu
### See my other blog post on how to run Windows 10 inside gnomes-boxes

sudo apt-get install gnome-boxes
sudo apt-get install virtualbox

### Gnome development tools
sudo apt-get install gnome-builder glade gitg ghex

# flash
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

References

Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 running on Yoga Pro 2 with HiDPI support

How to install Cura 2.X on Ubuntu 17.04

How to install Cura 2.X on Ubuntu

Cura is not available on ubuntu Repositories on version 17.10.

The resolution: To fix this issue you will need to install a PPA repository.

How to get this archive working properly is found here https://launchpad.net/~thopiekar/+archive/ubuntu/cura

rm -f ~/.config/cura/*
rm -f ~/.local/cura/*
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thopiekar/cura
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install cura cura-plugins-all cura-extra-plugins-all