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117 lines
7.1 KiB
Plaintext
117 lines
7.1 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 1229
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Title: HPR1229: Chromebook Acer C7 Review
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1229/hpr1229.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:59:14
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---
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I'm a first time podcaster and a total beginner addict.
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I basically only read the hacker public radio page so you want to do a podcast and this
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is the result.
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Allow me to apologize in advance for all the mistakes that I'm going to make.
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If you're bored or irritated, then you can imitate my accent while you listen.
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Allow me to mention also that hacker public radio and other podcasts like Linux for
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the rest of us always cheer me up and are basically the reason why I got into Linux
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about a year ago.
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I do not have an engineering or programming background.
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Basically if you expect here very in-depth programming knowledge to be shared, then you
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will be disappointed.
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So after listening to the podcasts for a while and lots of worrying, I finally installed
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Ubuntu and found out that it works pretty well and can do everything I need to do.
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And a few months ago I even got a Raspberry Pi, played around with it, with the Debian
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version, Raspbian and the Arch Linux and liked it very much.
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And just recently, while listening to the Linux for the rest of us podcast, I even
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pulled a trigger and bought a C7 Chromebook.
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I immediately put Ubuntu on it, which is also what I'm recording this on now.
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So this podcast is essentially how I am setting up my little Chromebook and I have one particular
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problem that I would like to share and how I solved it.
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So my little problem is I have currently a Swiss German keyboard layout at work.
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At my previous job I had a standard US keyboard and I'm pretty sure that this Chromebook
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has now a UK keyboard.
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So I needed to find a fast way to switch, first this UK keyboard layout to the Swiss
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German.
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And then from time to time, I want to change it to the US keyboard because it happens,
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you may believe it or not, that some things I just know where they are in the US layout,
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better than the Swiss layout.
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So if you stick with the Unity desktop, this is not really a problem.
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Go to System Settings, cable layout and just add the relevant ones.
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You know, I don't dislike Unity, but since I now made a jump to Linux, I usually play with
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Openbox or even recently started playing around with tiling desktop environments like the
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I3 window manager or awesome.
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I like this minimalistic, really lightning fast desktop environments.
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So where do I find these system settings now?
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After a little bit of searching, I found that the command is set xkb map.
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This command maps your keyboard to the appropriate layout.
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So my first problem is what is the name for this Swiss layout?
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This could also be found in, in slash usr slash share slash x11 slash xkb slash rules.
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And there you find all the layouts.
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I searched for Switzerland and figured out that the correct one is CH.
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Then I also needed obviously the US one, slightly easier, it's US, which will be part of
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my full set xkb map command.
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I also wanted that after I run this command that I could just switch very quickly between
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those two keyboards.
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And I finally chose one of the options that you could also see in the main pages.
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The option which is by clicking both shift keys at the same time.
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So the option would be GRP colon shift underscore toggle.
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So the full command which I hopefully will include in the show notes is finally set xkb map
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space dash option space apostrophe GRP colon shifts underscore toggle that's T O double
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GLE apostrophe space apostrophe CH comma US apostrophe apostrophe.
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I didn't want to really run this command every time I start the session or because it's
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just too long and too difficult.
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So I put it as an alias in the dot bash rc file, just called it Swiss.
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So now whenever I start a computer, open a terminal, write Swiss and then I have it loaded
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already and set to the proper keyboard.
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So that's my solution to my problem.
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This problem I had is I have this extra screen for the Raspberry Pi.
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Would like to use it also as a second screen for the Chromebook.
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This didn't work in the tiling desktop i3 and I just solved it with the x render command.
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The full command was x render space dash dash output space HDMI 1 space dash dash auto
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space dash dash right because I wanted on the right dash off space LVDS 1 basically just
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write x render and you will kind of see by studying the output where the second screen
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is.
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Then you might have to switch from VGA to HDMI and left right and you're done.
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The next issue or configuration I did on my Chromebook was to change that hostname
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Krubuntu.
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I wanted it to be something more personal and this was amazingly easy only needed to
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edit the Krubuntu in the file hostname which is at slash ETC slash hostname.
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Just change the name and that's done.
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At the end of the day I don't like Unity so you can just install a whole lot of window
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managers.
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I installed open box, tried to install Qtile, didn't work, I told i3 and the LXT also so
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on any given day I can try to play with something new and that's what I like.
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This install the Terminator as a terminal emulator and I like to stay also in the terminal
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for the file manager I found Ranger that I use recently as a file manager which is kind
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of old school but it's just lightning fast.
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Last thing I also use especially on the Raspberry Pi is for the off-site backup S3CMD.
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This allows you anybody who has an Amazon account to back up to the S3 cloud of Amazon.
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It was very easy to set it up and the syncing is done very nicely.
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So this was basically what I found for the Raspberry Pi because it doesn't allow Dropbox
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or Spyder Oak or any of those that do not have a version for ARM-based systems.
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For encrypting any of this information that I put as an off-site backup I use in encrypted
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file system in CFS or TrueCript of course.
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This is basically my setup.
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Ah one last thing just for complete nonsense and because it looks cool and it does absolutely
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nothing also install C matrix just try it and run it and if you like the movie you probably
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think it's cool to especially as a screensaver.
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This is the end of my first podcast.
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I hope you enjoyed parts of it.
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I hope to learn how to do a proper own cloud installation and stop using S3 command or
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Dropbox or Spyder Oak.
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But I heard that the guys from Linux for the rest of us, Cody Cooper and Dortador Geek
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are planning to do a podcast to teach us how to do it and I'm very much looking forward
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to this and we'll implement it as soon as they do it.
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Thank you very much and this was a lot of fun.
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I hope to do it at some point again.
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Bye bye.
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We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
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Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
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If you ever consider recording a podcast then visit our website to find out how easy
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it really is.
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HackerPublic Radio was founded by the DigitalDogPound and the Infonomicom Computer Club.
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HPR is funded by the Binary Revolution at binref.com.
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All binref projects are proudly sponsored by LinaPages.
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From shared hosting to custom private clouds, go to LinaPages.com for all your hosting
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needs.
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Unless otherwise stasis, today's show is released under a creative commons, attribution,
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share a life, three does our lives.
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