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| Running glic in processing from linux subsystem on chromeosflex still capture via chromeosflex screencapture utility. |
I got my first Chromebook back in 2018. A lot of what I was doing was online and for that they are great, it was one of the first Chromebooks which could run some android apps and also could run the sub-system for Linux. What I really bought that Chromebook for was to convert it into a cheap Linux notebook by reflashing the bios using the methods laid out by mrchromeboxtech ( https://github.com/MrChromebox). I'd previously experimented with Chromium-os, the open source version of Chromeos that you can run on any computer and then Neverware cloudready. But really I just wanted a cheap, well built laptop that would run a full Linux distro with a good level of hardware compatibility (something Linux still struggles with) and so I converted that laptop into a Linux laptop, and thought nothing more about Chromeos other than an interesting os that wasn't really up to what I wanted to do with it, great for secure browsing and security in general, but not for me.
Chromeos itself is based on Linux and stupidly secure and almost idiot proof it doesn't take much maintenance. Notice that Chromeos is based on Linux, Gentoo if I recall, this is where it gets interesting for me. Google bought up Neverware and now supports and develops cloudready as a free downloadable and installable os. You literally just install the chromebook recovery tool in Chrome browser run it and insert a usb stick and it it does all the rest of writing to the usb stick and creating the install medium for you .
One of the frustrations of using Linux is that there are all these wonderful tools available and methods that I can use to make my work but these either don't translate to windows well even when using git-bash terminal and a full open source tool set ( see previous posts on Windows 10) or people just find linux too complicated to install and once installed have problems with hardware compatability ie wifi not working would be the main one or just too difficult to set up and use because they have a windows mindset . So if half of the problem of using the tools I use and trying to explain or teach them to people is installation of an os and then unfamiliarity with an environment and it not connecting to wifi or not running screen resolution correctly because its fully libre or you have to enable the right repository ( ie non-free in Debian etc ) finding Explaining computers video on you-tube ( he has a great channel go and subscribe!! https://www.youtube.com/@ExplainingComputers ) about Googles update of cloudready, chromeos-flex, was an eye opener watch it here, it explains everything way better than I can https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFAg1FkGgMM&t=588s and the next video which explains how to enable the linux subsystem and installing linux apps and sharing between chromosflex and the linux subsystem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsWgzH3OzYY&t=48s
It was this video that gave me the hint that maybe there was a way of both introducing glitch art techniques to a wider audience, both those who wanted to install a linux based distro but were having problems getting a system up and running and those who might only have because of budget a chromebook to work with and also for reusing older computers ( chromeosflex) or taking advantage of the number of chromebooks floating around after the Pandemic which people were selling off or were being cost cut in shops due to lack of demand.
This is by way of an introduction to my project of making glitch art on chromeosflex/chromebooks , as what works on chromeosflex will also run on a chromebook.
To start off with I'm running chromeosflex on a Lenovo Thinkpad edge 535 from 2012 ( 11 years old!!) ( Amd A8 4500 m apu ) with 16gb of ddr3 ram and a 250gb ssd , everything else is stock which cost 150 euros secondhand. I've installed the subsystem for Linux which runs in an lxc container and allowed it to share with chromeosflex . And that's it. Oh yes ive installed ffmpeg etc, my usual tools and am running through what works and what doesn't , there will be more later but for now here's a peak of what Im doing. This is a standard hex edit of a film, Haunted castle, downloaded from archive.org re-encoded from h264 to xvid using ffmpeg then live hex edited using one of my scripts and captured using chromosflex's screencapture program ( which handily uses webm for capture ) .
