Has anyone been able to successfully stream to Linux on a Chromebook?

[Joshua]

Streaming from my Windows host to other Windows hosts within my home has been instant and very easy, both wirelessly and over ethernet. My wireless HP Chromebook 14 is not able to see the host computer, even though all the proper measures have been taken (beta update, etc). I have Linux installed side-by-side with the native Chrome operating system on the chromebook. Everything in Steam runs great except the in-home streaming. I have heard that Linux has a firewall built into it, so maybe that has something to do with it? Would I need to disable both the Linux and Chrome firewall since they run side-by-side?

[Joshua]

thunderchao původně napsal:

Just to clarify then, by setting up the chromebook to dualboot you got home streaming to work just fine? Because if so, I'm just going to buy a chromebook and pocket the ~300 I'd save on a windows laptop.

Yes sir. Here's a quick evaluation from me:

Pros:
-Aesthetically pleasing (I think it's a beautiful piece of equipment)
-Physically lightweight
-Silent
-Does not get hot like other laptops
-No moving parts
-Boots to chromeOS almost instantaneously
-Battery life is about 10 hours (using ChromeOS, Linux is about 6 hours) using WiFi the whole time
-Keyboard feels great
-Display looks great
-Trackpad works flawlessly, it's almost as good as a Macbook trackpad
-2x USB 3.0 ports
-HDMI
-Charges very quickly
-Syncs with your chrome settings/apps automatically

Cons
-Almost no local data storage (this is a non-issue for me; it's 2014 and everywhere I go has WiFi)
-You won't be able to install Windows, bottom line. You absolutely will not be able to run Windows programs natively (I've seen a guy install Windows on his C7 but he wasn't able to get many of the hardware drivers to work including keyboard and mouse)
-Raw performance is not on-par with $320 Windows laptops

In my opinion, this is the best $320 computer possible. If you're spending this amount of money on a laptop, you'd better be buying it to use for web surfing, email, communication, and general lightweight computer tasks. If you think you can get a gaming laptop for this price, you're kidding yourself. Yes I'm sure you could find a netbook or cheap laptop for $320 that will outperform a chromebook in terms of raw power, but the pros I listed above far outweigh the ability to run slightly more demanding games or run Windows and associated programs natively.

I use my Chromebook for taking notes at school, reading digital books/textbooks, doing online classwork, email, web browsing, video streaming, and doing some light gaming/tasks in my offtime. I have a powerful PC tower for my heavy lifting, I don't need to be able to run Fallout 3 on my work/school computer that I take everywhere. It's also far more convenient that Google automatically saves my schoolwork as I type it rather than depend on local files that can be corrupted or lost in a crash.

It's very neat that I can dual boot to Linux and have some more software options, it's a great feature to be able to have. I can fool around with cool apps and run some games on Steam and Steam in-home streaming.

tl;dr I love my HP Chromebook 14. All these people talking trash about the Chromebooks have no clue what they're talking about and have clearly never used one.

[ghostlenin]

Yes sir. Here's a quick evaluation from me:

Pros:
-Aesthetically pleasing (I think it's a beautiful piece of equipment)
-Physically lightweight
-Silent
-Does not get hot like other laptops
-No moving parts
-Boots to chromeOS almost instantaneously
-Battery life is about 10 hours (using ChromeOS, Linux is about 6 hours) using WiFi the whole time
-Keyboard feels great
-Display looks great
-Trackpad works flawlessly, it's almost as good as a Macbook trackpad
-2x USB 3.0 ports
-HDMI
-Charges very quickly
-Syncs with your chrome settings/apps automatically

Cons
-Almost no local data storage (this is a non-issue for me; it's 2014 and everywhere I go has WiFi)
-You won't be able to install Windows, bottom line. You absolutely will not be able to run Windows programs natively (I've seen a guy install Windows on his C7 but he wasn't able to get many of the hardware drivers to work including keyboard and mouse)
-Raw performance is not on-par with $320 Windows laptops

In my opinion, this is the best $320 computer possible. If you're spending this amount of money on a laptop, you'd better be buying it to use for web surfing, email, communication, and general lightweight computer tasks. If you think you can get a gaming laptop for this price, you're kidding yourself. Yes I'm sure you could find a netbook or cheap laptop for $320 that will outperform a chromebook in terms of raw power, but the pros I listed above far outweigh the ability to run slightly more demanding games or run Windows and associated programs natively.

I use my Chromebook for taking notes at school, reading digital books/textbooks, doing online classwork, email, web browsing, video streaming, and doing some light gaming/tasks in my offtime. I have a powerful PC tower for my heavy lifting, I don't need to be able to run Fallout 3 on my work/school computer that I take everywhere. It's also far more convenient that Google automatically saves my schoolwork as I type it rather than depend on local files that can be corrupted or lost in a crash.

It's very neat that I can dual boot to Linux and have some more software options, it's a great feature to be able to have. I can fool around with cool apps and run some games on Steam and Steam in-home streaming.

tl;dr I love my HP Chromebook 14. All these people talking trash about the Chromebooks have no clue what they're talking about and have clearly never used one.

Yep. I actually just placed my order. I don't need it for a gaming machine, but if I can get steam to stream, that's a very neat bonus. I need it for internet stuff, for taking notes, and for writing. I'm going to be taking it up to school every day, so it needs to be light. This really fit the bill in pretty much every way (adjusting to not being able to use the Office suite will be the biggest hassle) and it was at least $200 cheaper than the Windows machine I was looking at.

[Joshua]

thunderchao původně napsal:

Yep. I actually just placed my order. I don't need it for a gaming machine, but if I can get steam to stream, that's a very neat bonus. I need it for internet stuff, for taking notes, and for writing. I'm going to be taking it up to school every day, so it needs to be light. This really fit the bill in pretty much every way (adjusting to not being able to use the Office suite will be the biggest hassle) and it was at least $200 cheaper than the Windows machine I was looking at.

Use the Google-provided Office suite. I've used Microsoft Office my entire life until now and I tell you I don't miss it. The great part about using the Google office is that your documents and projects are saved as you make them. I've been using Microsoft Office since I was little and I can't tell you how many times I've lost entire projects because I forgot to save and the computer crashed or whatever other odd circumstance. MS Office will have no problem opening up your Google-created files and Google 99% of the time has no problem with the inverse. Good luck and you're going to love your Chromebook, I know I love mine.

[blackout24]

If you want something even more compact the Acer C720 might interest you. It has the same hardware as the HP Chromebook 14 but only costs 200 USD for the 2 GB version and 250 for the 4GB version. You can upgrade the storage with a M.2 form factor SSD. They don't cost that much even for 120 GB. It is powerful enough to run Skyrim through the windows compatability layer. You might get them even cheaper on eBay. Performance will likely get about 20% better with the latest kernel and mesa. If you use ubuntu on it you'll have to wait for 14.04 which is not to far away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEqB0HDKW1w

[ghostlenin]

gamer_gurl95 původně napsal:

Use the Google-provided Office suite. I've used Microsoft Office my entire life until now and I tell you I don't miss it. The great part about using the Google office is that your documents and projects are saved as you make them. I've been using Microsoft Office since I was little and I can't tell you how many times I've lost entire projects because I forgot to save and the computer crashed or whatever other odd circumstance. MS Office will have no problem opening up your Google-created files and Google 99% of the time has no problem with the inverse. Good luck and you're going to love your Chromebook, I know I love mine.

I've been using Google Docs/Drive for a couple years, but for any 'serious' stuff (like my dissertation...) I've been using Microsoft. So it's not like it's totally new, I just am going to be using it a lot more, which is fine. The powerpoints I use in the class I teach are all made in Drive, too, since it handles youtube integration sooooooooo much better than Microsoft Powerpoint.

blackout24 původně napsal:

If you want something even more compact the Acer C720 might interest you. It has the same hardware as the HP Chromebook 14 but only costs 200 USD for the 2 GB version and 250 for the 4GB version. You can upgrade the storage with a M.2 form factor SSD. They don't cost that much even for 120 GB. It is powerful enough to run Skyrim through the windows compatability layer. You might get them even cheaper on eBay. Performance will likely get about 20% better with the latest kernel and mesa. If you use ubuntu on it you'll have to wait for 14.04 which is not to far away.

Nah, I can't do the 11" laptop. Way too small. My double-monitor setup on my desktop has totally spoiled me for small screens. Plus, the 4gb ram was really the big reason I got the HP 14" instead of, for example, waiting until Feb 18 for the new Toshiba one to come out.

[Joshua]

thunderchao původně napsal:

gamer_gurl95 původně napsal:

Use the Google-provided Office suite. I've used Microsoft Office my entire life until now and I tell you I don't miss it. The great part about using the Google office is that your documents and projects are saved as you make them. I've been using Microsoft Office since I was little and I can't tell you how many times I've lost entire projects because I forgot to save and the computer crashed or whatever other odd circumstance. MS Office will have no problem opening up your Google-created files and Google 99% of the time has no problem with the inverse. Good luck and you're going to love your Chromebook, I know I love mine.

I've been using Google Docs/Drive for a couple years, but for any 'serious' stuff (like my dissertation...) I've been using Microsoft. So it's not like it's totally new, I just am going to be using it a lot more, which is fine. The powerpoints I use in the class I teach are all made in Drive, too, since it handles youtube integration sooooooooo much better than Microsoft Powerpoint.

blackout24 původně napsal:

If you want something even more compact the Acer C720 might interest you. It has the same hardware as the HP Chromebook 14 but only costs 200 USD for the 2 GB version and 250 for the 4GB version. You can upgrade the storage with a M.2 form factor SSD. They don't cost that much even for 120 GB. It is powerful enough to run Skyrim through the windows compatability layer. You might get them even cheaper on eBay. Performance will likely get about 20% better with the latest kernel and mesa. If you use ubuntu on it you'll have to wait for 14.04 which is not to far away.

Nah, I can't do the 11" laptop. Way too small. My double-monitor setup on my desktop has totally spoiled me for small screens. Plus, the 4gb ram was really the big reason I got the HP 14" instead of, for example, waiting until Feb 18 for the new Toshiba one to come out.

I also think the C7 is kind of clackety and rickety. It handles physically a lot more like a Windows netbook, and I don't like the display. There aren't any USB 3.0 ports either. It also has a fan and gets kind of hot/loud. I think the build quality on the HP 14" is just a lot better (It also looks infinitely prettier). I also loved my Chromebook 11. The only downside was the ARM processor which can't run Steam or a lot of other software and the fact that Google pulled some shady ♥♥♥♥ with the people who bought the 11. There was an issue with the chargers overheating and they never warned us about it. No recall, not even an email from them. I found out on the news that they made a blog post about it. I couldn't even return it because it was past the return window of opportunity. I will never buy from the Play store again.

[m3lang3]

So getting back to the original topic, I have the same HP Chromebook running Crouton (I haven't gotten around to Chrubuntu yet). Testing with a Windows 7 host on the same switch with IPs in the same network, the Windows box can see the Chromebook but says its status is Not Connected. The Chromebook doesn't see the Win7 host at all. I verified that UDP port 27036 was open and ready on both machines.

Doing an iptables -L in a root terminal in Chrome OS showed that UDP is redirected to NFQUEUE, which appears to be a target that forwards UDP packets to programs. (I'm not an iptables expert) I'm not sure the problem lies there, however, because if Chrome OS not knowing about what's running in the chroot broke UDP, DNS wouldn't work inside the chroot.

I hope this is useful to someone. If there's interest, I'll sniff the traffic with Wireshark and post the results.

[Joshua]

m3lang3 původně napsal:

So getting back to the original topic, I have the same HP Chromebook running Crouton (I haven't gotten around to Chrubuntu yet). Testing with a Windows 7 host on the same switch with IPs in the same network, the Windows box can see the Chromebook but says its status is Not Connected. The Chromebook doesn't see the Win7 host at all. I verified that UDP port 27036 was open and ready on both machines.

Doing an iptables -L in a root terminal in Chrome OS showed that UDP is redirected to NFQUEUE, which appears to be a target that forwards UDP packets to programs. (I'm not an iptables expert) I'm not sure the problem lies there, however, because if Chrome OS not knowing about what's running in the chroot broke UDP, DNS wouldn't work inside the chroot.

I hope this is useful to someone. If there's interest, I'll sniff the traffic with Wireshark and post the results.

Cool cool. But to be honest, running Crouton alongside ChromeOS suuuuuucked. I couldn't run barely any games. I could barely run Super Meat Boy and even then i had to run it at something crazy like 600x400 windowed. Though I've had to try about 5 different flavors of Chrubuntu to find one that worked with all my main software (Xubuntu 13.10 32-bit), I'm really enjoying it at this point. Rats off to ya for putting in the work, though.

[Pybro]

per /u/twisted- at reddit, you have to modify ChromeOS's iptables. What I did was the following

* open a shell (ctrl + alt + t)
* type shell
* type sudo iptables -F
* type sudo iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
* type sudo iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
* type sudo iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT

What this does is flush your iptables (-F) and then reassign them to let everything through. Which is probably a very insecure way of running your chromebook, and I don't know if you want to do that or not. BUT, in-home streaming is now working for me in Crouton.

[m3lang3]

Thank you Pybro #2, it works! I had made a script so I could run Steam games from the SD card in Crouton, so I added those lines for convenience. Here's what I now have in: /usr/local/bin/go

#!/bin/sh
sudo iptables -F
sudo iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
sudo iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
sudo iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
sudo mount -o remount,exec /media/removable/TOSHIBA
sudo startxfce4

(TOSHIBA is the SD card's volume label and is automatically mounted there when inserted)

pd8731: In case you ever decide to go back to Crouton (like if you break your USB stick or something), you can follow these instructions to get game performance up to acceptable levels: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valve?action=recall&rev=72#Intel_Graphics

[Dave]

Using a Chromebook for streaming should be impossible, because last I checked, Chromebooks use ARM chips, and Steam hasn't been compiled for anything besides x86

[m3lang3]

Dave: You must be thinking of something else; Chromebooks have all been Intel Atoms or Celerons, which are x86. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeBook#Chromebook_models EDIT: Whoops, two of the 15 available Chromebooks have been ARM-based.

[Pybro]

Dave, there were a bunch of ARM chromebooks, but there's many now that have celerons in them

[Furzkopffisch]

Thank you sooooo much, it finally works now.:D