Although many people think of them as older participants in the portable computing market, the fact is that Chromebooks based on Google’s Chrome OS first went on sale in June of 2011–not long ago. In a recent post on the state of Chromebooks, I noted that prices in the $200 range for Chromebooks like the Acer system shown here are attracting users, but also noted that market share numbers are not showing these system making a big splash.
There is a sub-trend going on with Chromebooks, though, and it involves users buying the low-cost systems and putting their favorite Linux distros on them, which isn’t hard to do. This trend will only pick up now that the latest version of the Linux kernel includes code for running Linux on Chromebooks.
You can read more about modifications to the Linux kernel for Chromebooks in Wired’s story here. But right here on OStatic, we’ve seen lots of evidence that readers are interested in buying inexpensive Chromebooks only to run Ubuntu, Mint or other Linux flavors on the systems.
