Yesterday I wrote about installing Ubuntu on your Chromebook using Crouton. However, Crouton only installs a few apps so here's what you should install on your new Ubuntu installation running on top of Chrome OS and a few thing that you may want to fix, like the brightness and volume keys or how to get Ubuntu Software Center to work.

I recently got a Chromebook and decided to install Ubuntu on it. There are two ways (that I know of) of doing this: using Crouton, which uses a chroot environment and lets you run both Chrome OS and Ubuntu in the same time and you can switch between the two using a keyboard shortcut, and ChrUbuntu, which works you can dual boot with Chrome OS but it only supports x86-based Chromebooks.

Since I have an ARM-based Chromebook (HP Chromebook 11 - it's not on sale currently due to some issues with the charger), I've used Crouton. I actually prefer Crouton for the way it allows switching between Chrome OS and Ubuntu without having to restart.

If you own a Chromebook and want to install Ubuntu using Crouton, here's how to do it. I've tested this on HP Chromebook 11, but it should work on any Chromebook.

Google has released a remote desktop extension for Chrome. The extension works everywhere Chrome does (including Chrome OS and Chromium) and is as easy to use as it gets: there are no settings and you only have to enter an access code and you're ready to go.

Hexxeh has made vanilla Chrome OS VirtualBox, VMware and USB drive images available for download so you can easily try out the latest Chrome OS nightly builds without having to compile it yourself.

Google held a conference today in which they've demoed Chrome OS which is said to be extremely speedy, have ultra-fast setup, built-in Verizon connectivity, multiple users support, easy security and application updates as well as Citrix Receiver applications (Citrix Receiver allows businesses to deploy desktop applications, such as Microsoft Excel).

But that's not all! Google also announced that Acer and Samsung will launch Chrome OS netbooks in mid 2011, with other manufacturers to closely follow. Further more, Google launched the Chrome OS Pilot Program in which a Chrome OS netbook ("CR-48") will be used for testing. A limited number of these CR-48 netbooks are available right away - you can apply for one already by either submitting a video on YouTube or by filling out THIS form.

Info thanks to Lifehacker. For a lot more info on Google's announcement today on Chrome OS, see the post on Lifehacker.

Note: For running Chrome OS from USB stick, we are going to use Chrome OS Cherry (formerly Diet Chromium), a slimmer Chrome OS that supports more hardware.

Here's what you need to do to install Chrome OS on an USB stick:

1. Download Chrome OS Cherry and extract the downloaded archive.

2. Let's write the chromiumos.img file onto an USB stick (bootable, obviously):

Mark Renouf has compiled a VMware hard disk image of Chrome OS for testing out in your virtual machine environment [via lifehacker]:

This is a ChromeOS image converted to VMware .vmdk file. It was built from instructions provided on the ChromiumOS developers site:
http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/building-chromium-os/build-instructions

Built from sources retreived on 11/19/2009, following the announcement of the opening of the ChromeOS source code.

Shared user password (for sudo, etc is 'chromeos')

The image can be downloaded the Pirate Bay.

Keep in mind that Google Chrome OS might now be usable for now and that the source code has just been released yesterday.

Instructions for using the .vmdk image in VirtualBox can be found at TechCrunch.

Update: Korben (thank you!) uploaded the Chrome OS to Megaupload. There is a virtual machine disk image for VMWare and one for Virtualbox:

Download Chrome OS for VmWare (.vmdk)

Download Chrome OS for VirtualBox (.vdi)

Cannonical just announced on their blog that they are "contributing engineering to Google under contract". For Chrome OS, obviously.

More about this, on the Canonical blog.