This is 100% safe, as it writes to a user-writeable area of the firmware image which is completely separate from/does not affect ChromeOS. If the device supports Legacy Boot Mode, but does not ship with a functional RW_LEGACY payload (or does not ship with one at all), one can flash a SeaBIOS payload to the RW_LEGACY part of the firmware.One of the following approaches can be taken in order to install Arch Linux on Chrome OS devices which did not ship with SeaBIOS as part of the installed firmware: These models require a 3rd party RW_LEGACY firmware to be loaded for Legacy Boot Mode to be functional.

Models with an Atom-based SoC (Baytrail, Braswell, Apollolake) have Legacy Boot Mode capability, but do not ship with a RW_LEGACY/SeaBIOS payload (that part of the firmware is blank).

Models with a Core-i based SoC (Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, KabyLake) mostly ship with a functional Legacy Boot Mode payload updating to a 3rd party build can provide bug fixes and additional features. SeaBIOS behaves like a traditional BIOS that boots into the MBR of the disk, and from there into standard boot loaders like Syslinux and GRUB. It is enabled by the SeaBIOS payload of coreboot, the open-source firmware used for all Chrome OS devices (with the exception of the first generation of Chromebooks and a few early ARM models). Legacy Boot Mode has a dedicated firmware region, RW_LEGACY, which is designed to be user-writeable (hence the 'RW' notation) and is completely separate from the ChromeOS portion of the firmware (ie, it is safe to update and cannot brick the device). For instructions on how to install Arch Linux in a ChromeOS container without having to enable developer mode see Crostini Introduction Legacy Boot ModeĪll recent Intel-based Chrome OS devices (starting with the 2013 Chromebook Pixel) feature a Legacy Boot Mode, designed to allow the user to boot Linux. Note: This article describes how to install Arch Linux by activating developer mode.

Run linux on chromebook