Installing Ubuntu linux Asus C302C or Acer spin 713 Chromebooks

Check here how to flash the rom

https://wiki.mrchromebox.tech/Firmware_Write_Protect

Check here to see if you should use Legacy or UEFI ROM

I used UEFI for both laptops

https://mrchromebox.tech/#devices

Asus C320C write protection removal

Removed screw and close your laptop to enable the bios be overwritten

https://www.asty.org/location-of-asus-c302c-write-protect-screw/

Acer spin 713 (cp713-3W) write protection removal

Disconnect the battery cable, be care full since the battery is lose, when you remove the screws and remove the cover. I use one of those plastic phone openers to go around the edge, if you open the screen a little bit, is easy to insert the plastic or your nails to start poping the metal bottom. since the battery is lose, put the laptop horizontal before finishing removing the bottom cover.

 

after that

Used mrchromebox to install a new bios on the asus chromebook

https://mrchromebox.tech/

I installed Ubuntu 25.04 with a 8Gb usb drive.

Enabled Secure Boot on the Bios after installing Ubuntu 25.04

Sound

Option 1:

Goto https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio and follow instructions. 

This script puts the files in /tmp and then copies these to /usr/share/alsa/ucm2 folder by adding mores configs to it, The script does not support a uninstall feature, but it works, those files won't be managed by dpkg.

 

Reboot the laptop and sound should work fine now

 

Option 2:

 

To make sound work you need configure /usr/share/alsa folder with the correct config files, if you know what you are doing you would need copy these from https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio generated files. You can edit setup-audio and functions.py if you know what you are doing to comment out mkdir, cpfile, rmfile, rmdir, cpdir, can copy the files you want from the tmp folder, this script does not need root, to generate the /tmp files. Then copy

 

   sudo cp -r ucm2/platforms/* /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/platforms/
   sudo cp -r ucm2/codecs/hda/* /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/codecs/hda/
   sudo cp -r ucm2/codecs/max98373 /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/codecs/
   sudo cp -r ucm2/conf.d/sof-rt5682 /usr/share/alsa/ucm2/conf.d/

 

Reboot the laptop and sound should work fine now

 

To see if configs are working you can run sudo alsactl init until it stops giving you failure. dmesg will also be usefull.

You can use the cmd below to restart the sounds service, in case it stops working.

 systemctl --user restart pipewire.service

Trackpad

To enabled right click on the trackpad with 2 fingers goto settings.

Gnome, Firefox and chromium touch support

Works out of the box

Status

To manage logitech devices install 

sudo apt install solaar

 

# Extra settings

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

Status

Laptop is fully functional, besides the problems listed below. Battery life time is awesome. trackpad, wifi, bluetooth, physical power volume buttons, sleep, hibernate, power modes, usbc hdmi video/sound work as designed.

Bios Update

 Use https://mrchromebox.tech/ instructions

cd; curl -LO mrchromebox.tech/firmware-util.sh && sudo bash firmware-util.sh

Make sure secure boot is disable on the bios otherwise the script won't be able to update the bios, you can re-enable after the update.

Problems I still have

For the Acer spin 713

Keyboard lights

Download  the ectool binary from here https://docs.chrultrabook.com/docs/installing/ectool.html and run

ectool pwmsetkblight 100

 

USB3 ports

• For charging they work fine
• Usbc cable to connect to monitors started working with with latest ubuntu 25.10, it doesn't work with ubuntu 25.04.
• The usbc ports on the laptop, only work for data as regular usb ports if you plug a usb device when you power on the device, if there is no device plug to the laptop during power on, the ports won't work for data on ubuntu.

 Other

1- sdcard reader is not detected

2 - If you have sounds problems use ubuntu 25.10, I had problems with ubuntu LTS

For the Asus C302C

Fix keyboard special keys

cd ~/Downloads; sudo apt-get -y install curl; curl -LOk https://github.com/fascinatingcaptain/CBFixesAndTweaks/archive/master.tar.gz; tar -zxvf master.tar.gz; cd CBFixesAndTweaks-master

# make backup of original pc config filesudo

cp -n /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc.bck
 

# copy new pc config file

sudo cp pc /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/

reboot

Asus Chromebook C302 with Android Apps

I got an Asus Chromebook 302 that comes with an Intel core m3, 64Gb, 4Gb of memory.

Some problems I got on my device:

After I enabled the android app store the laptop started to reboot randomly. I tried removing the apps and switching chrome os channels, but it did not fix the problem.

So I decided to create a recovery SDCard using chrome recovery utility. I re-imaged the laptop with the SD card, using the instructions from the chrome recovery utility.

After that the laptop booted in stable channel, I update the laptop to the latest stable image.

List of Applications I am running:

Pandora, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Hangouts, Play Newsstand, Hangouts Dialer, Calendar, Photos, Npr One, Voxer, Twilight, Firefox, Youtube, Google wifi, Hipchat, 3Dmark.

Here is a screenshot running 23 Android applications at same time.

This is screen shot running twilight, for those of us missing a blue light filter.

3DMark and Octane

The score below is running in the ChromeOS dev channel. I only able to get octane scores between 15000-17000, but the machine still feels really fast.

UnKilled

Alto

The Asus Chromebook C302

This post was written on the Asus C302. I am very impressed with it and would highly recommend it.

Pros:

• Amazing performance,
• Very good build quality, a great keyboard, very nice screen, and just a premium solid feel to it
• Android apps on
• Great backlit keyboard (Mac-book Pro feel)
• Convertible
• Some Android apps like calendar, Pandora, photos, YouTube, Firefox support bigger screen, but most apps still don't, and these apps render in landscape or portrait more like they look on a phone, but without using the extra space of the big screen.
• I like the USB C cable and being able to charge the laptop from both sides, avoids awkward cables when the charger is on the wrong side, like my other laptops.
• Fanless, silent, love that.
• Charging is fast.

Cons:

• Android apps only support 2 sizes, full screen or phone size. In full-screen mode the majority of the apps are just a large super sized version of the phone version, offering very little extra functionality.

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

A Look inside the Asus C302 chromebook

Here are some internal pictures of the Asus C302 chromebook.

You will need to remove the back feet to be able to open it. The feets are glued and there is a screw under each foot.

Asus C302 is a 64 Gb disk, 4Gb of ram, Intel core m3 model.