Could I turn a Pi into a DIY Chromebox?

Question

I recently got my first Raspberry Pi and I've done all the normal playing, setting up XBMC, a LAMP server, NAS, etc.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to mount it on the back of a monitor and install lightdm-login-chromeos and essentially have a DIY Chromebox or would the lesser amount of RAM have too large of an impact?

This is old, but it's something. http://hackaday.com/2012/06/22/bringing-chromium-to-the-raspberry-pi/ — , May 10 '13 at 17:24

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

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Based on the fact that the Pi cannot run Ubuntu, I would say no. (Both the lack of a port (to ARM6), and lack of RAM on the Pi (used to be only 256mb).) However, the Model B boards now come with 512mb RAM , the minimum for Ubuntu being also 512, so maybe in the future this could be possible.

From the official website:

Because of issues with newer releases of Ubuntu and the ARM processor we are using, Ubuntu can’t commit to support Raspberry Pi at the moment.

(See here)

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

Community

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answered Jan 07 '13 at 17:01

ACarter

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Ubuntu has no support for the ARM architecture in use. – Alex Chamberlain Jan 07 '13 at 17:31
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@Alex That's what I meant by lack of a port - there's no port to ARM6 – ACarter Jan 07 '13 at 17:40
It's more than a lack of a port; they have actively decided not to support it and move on to more modern architectures. – Alex Chamberlain Jan 07 '13 at 21:39
Could I compile it from source on Raspbian perhaps? I'm mostly wondering if 512mb is too little RAM. – FatalKeystroke Jan 09 '13 at 00:28
Maybe, I really don't know, sorry. It might be worth asking the folks on ask ubuntu about something like this. – ACarter Jan 09 '13 at 16:42

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 23 '16 at 04:53

The way things sit right now, this is unlikely to ever work.

There are two major issues:

Lightdm is setup to run under the Xorg windowing system, as is the version of Chrome that you mention. While Xorg will run on the Pi, there are not currently accelerated video drivers, so performance will be painfully slow.
The Chrome software you mention is not ported to the ARM CPU architecture. There are other browsers and window managers and login managers that are, but you would need to assemble a software stack that did work, which would be different than your original question.

So, no. There are ways to setup a browser centric desktop experience on a RPi, but you should forget about that particular software stack unless you want to do a serious amount of porting.

Could I turn a Pi into a DIY Chromebox?

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