You can install Ubuntu on a chromebook using crouton. First you will need to install it first from github and download the latest version.
Open the new terminal in Chromebook *
(Alt+Ctrl+t)
Type this command to open shell:
shell
Now we are going to install Ubuntu. There are several desktop environments available including KDE Plasma, Unity and Xfce. Unity can be quite heavy for Chromebook hardware and xfce is way too plain for my taste, so I am going to install KDE Plasma.
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -t kde
(Substitute KDE, with xfce, or unity if you want )
Example:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -t xfce
For encryption use:
sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -t kde
(This is not necessary)
If you are installing it on a Chromebook with touchscreen then also add the ‘touch’ parameter:
sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -t touch,kde
(Needed for touch activation)
Now you are downloading this may take awhile... Once the install is finished Crouton will ask you to enter the user-name and UNIX password.
user-name
Now you can start Plasma by running the following command in shell:
sudo startkde
The install will be bare-minimum and won’t come with the applications that are packed by distributions. So updates are needed.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
To go back to Chrome OS, and keep KDE running, use this key combination Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Back. To come back to Kubuntu from Chrome OS, use this combination. Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Forward.
When you log out of KDE, it exits you from Chroot and you will have to again run the sudo startkde command to start Plasma or the desktop that you have installed.
Note: This will NOT work on education or company chromebooks!