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I searched for a low priced MacBook Air alternative with retina resolution and found HP Chromebook 13

At 12.95mm/.51in, the amazingly thin and light HP Chromebook 13 provides professionals a simple, secure, and easily managed cloud-based experience. Built for collaboration, this agile performer has a host of accessories1 to help enhance productivity.

Starting at $499.00

I don't wish to use Google spyware (privacy nightmare). In the first few months I wish to use Chromium OS Universal Chroot Environment, crouton and later install Ubuntu native.

Is there a an ad blocking mechanism available for Chrome native web browser?

Does crouton work with this device? Will Ubuntu be installable on this device (hardware specs) after a few months (I hope there will be tutorials and howtos)?

I am completely new to Chromebooks, what's your experience with Ubuntu on Chromebooks?

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    Just as a tip: try to narrow the question down. You are asking a lot of different things in this one question, that makes it difficult to answer. Also there's really no need for the rhetoric (spyware, privacy nightmare). Why you are trying to avoid using Chrome OS has no impact on how to avoid it. :) Jun 15, 2016 at 9:03

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Crouton will work, and installing Ubuntu Desktop via Crouton is easy. However: you will have Chrome OS running "in the background" and it'll be used for all the low level hardware stuff. The Ubuntu Desktop is more or less running as an App on top of Chrome OS. Also note that Crouton requires developer mode, and that (sadly) disables the bootloader signature verification.

By the way: screen scaling (aka pixel doubling) on the Ubuntu Desktop works okay-ish. Be prepared to run into Apps that don't work without some tinkering (unfortunately, Chrome, Chromium, and Firefox were among them last time I checked).

Installing Ubuntu natively on Chromebooks is fraught with difficulties and incompatibilities, but you can certainly make it work if you don't mind a little tinkering. On some Chromebooks, there are audio driver problems, adjusting screen brightness may not work, the touchscreens have always been kind of a hack to get working, you may have (very annoying) power management issues... The list goes on.

I run a minimal Ubuntu installation via Crouton that I only access from the command line. For everything else, I use Google Spyware (i.e. Chrome, which I would have installed anyway). And that setup, if you can live with the privacy nightmare, works absolutely wonderfully.

You can install Chromium OS, the open source spyware, but I've never got it working properly. They make it really difficult, with so-so support for new hardware and an installation procedure that's, shall we say, not easy.

So in summary: Crouton works like a dream, native Ubuntu installs are probably worse than they would be on a ThinkPad, a MacBook Pro, or a Dell XPS, and it's kind of difficult to get rid of Google Chrome OS.

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Crouton runs not bad on Chromebooks and I have been using it with HP Chromebook 14 (14.04 with XFCE). There are some issues however,

  • Runs under Developer mode : Since crouton works only under developer mode, security is an issue. You will get a white screen saying that system is in Developer mode when booting in. (This is a risk since somebody can wipe out the system in that stage !)

  • Switching between OSs : The shortcuts for on the go switching between ChromeOS and Ubuntu may not work. (They do not work for me). The alternative is to log-off from Ubuntu and go back to ChromeOS.

  • Keyboard shortcuts : Volume, screen brightness may not work by default. Though they work in my case.

  • Ubuntu native shortcuts : May not work. You may need to set some of them separately.

  • Installing additional programs : The default programs like Libre Office, File Roller, Audio Player, etc.. are not installed and you have to install them separately. This is advantage since it saves lots of space, but then more extra job is to be done to get things ready.

I have mentioned some more details in my other post here

Apart from this, crouton is stable, can access the same folders as ChromeOS and otherwise works fine (atleast for me).

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