To follow up on my last article about Linux on the ASUS T100TA, I recently acquired (for about $150) an ASUS C201 Chromebook, with a quad-core (1.8ghz?) ARM processor, 4GB RAM, and a tiny 16GB SSD. This is the first time I've used a Chromebook, and ChromeOS feels not-so-bad. I wish we could target it directly!

...but we can't! At least, not without going through Javascript/WebAssembly/whatever. Having said that, one can put it in developer mode (which isn't difficult but also is sort of a pain in the ass, especially when it prompts you whenever it boots to switch out of developer mode, which if you do will wipe out all of your data, ugh). In developer mode, you can use Crouton to install Linux distributions in a chroot environment (ChromeOS uses a version of the Linux kernel, but then has its own special userland environment that is no fun).

I installed Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) on my C201, and it is working fine for the most part! It's really too bad there's no easy way to install Ubuntu completely native, rather than having to run it alongside ChromeOS. ChromeOS has great support for the hardware (including sleeping), whereas when you're in the Ubuntu view, it doesn't seem you can sleep. So you have to remember to switch back to ChromeOS before closing the lid.

So I built REAPER on this thing, fun! And I still have a few GB of disk left, amazingly. Found a few bugs in EEL2/ARM when building with gcc5, fixed those (I'm now aware of __attribute__((naked)), and __clear_cache()).

Some interesting performance comparisons, compiling REAPER:

• C201 (gcc 5.4): 9m 7s
• T100TA (gcc 6.3): 8m 45s
• Raspberry Pi 3 w/ slow MicroSD (gcc 4.7): 28m

REAPER v5.50rc6 (48khz, 256 spls, stock settings), "BradSucks_MakingMeNervous.rpp" from old REAPER installers -- OGG Vorbis audio at low samplerates, a few FX here and there, not a whole lot else:

• C201: 28% CPU, 13% RT CPU, 15% FX CPU, longest block: 1.5ms
• T100TA: 22% CPU, 9% RT CPU, 10% FX CPU, longest block 0.9ms

(The T100TA's ALSA drivers are rough, can't do samplerates other than 48khz, can't do full duplex...)

Overall both of these cheapo laptops are really quite nice, reasonably usable for things, nice screens, outstanding battery life. If only the C201 could run Linux directly without the ugly ChromeOS developer-mode kludge (and if it had a 64GB SSD instead of 16GB...). Also, I do miss the T100TA's charge-from-microUSB (the C201 has a small 12V power supply, but charging via USB is better even if it is slow).

I'll probably use the T100TA more than the C201 -- not because it's slightly faster, but because I feel like I own it, whereas on the C201 I feel like I'm a guest of Google's (as a side note, apparently you can install a fully native Debian, but I haven't gotten there yet.. The fact that you have to use the kernel blob from ChromeOS makes me hesitate more, but one of these days I might give it a shot).