Dear digital/ui/web designers:Linux is ready for you.

Give it a try on a Chromebook
for less than 300 bucks.

Prologue

I had to get a new laptop as secondary machine some weeks ago. In 2009 I bought my first MacBook, two more followed. After getting my iPhone exchanged for a Sony Z3 Compact and my Mac Mini for a Mini-ITX with Xeon, 16GB RAM and GTX 970 I decided to search for a cheap, lightweight, solid and non-apple laptop. I stumbled over Chromebooks (yes, these weird browsing machines for families and schools), which looked very interesting regarding their pricetag. Please note that this is a very specific guide on setting up an Acer C720 with Ubuntu and GNOME for a web designer or developer.

Ubuntu with GNOME

Where to buy what?

I researched for quite some time and finally went for an Acer C720 with 4 GB RAM (250 €) and a separate 64 GB M.2 SSD (45 €). I installed the SSD, which is quite easy as you can see here. Don’t worry about the Acers’ performance, it will do fine. I did some tests with several tabs in Chrome (720p YouTube video and Deezer Music stream running) and Firefox, Inkscape, Libre Office, Sublime, Settings and Files browser running without any problems at all on my Celeron 2957U powered machine.

If you happen to live in North America you are lucky: Grab the i3 model which isn’t available in Europe. If you live in continental Europe (as I do) you are out of luck: You have to get the 4GB RAM model from theUK. It only took UPS two days to ship it to Germany, but you have to live with an UK labeled ISO keyboard and an UK power adapter, but you can get the right one for 7 € in your local store or @Amazon.

Setting it up.

After you have finished preparing the hardware, you can install ChromeOS on the new SSD. If you want to do any heavy work on this machine, Chrome OS isn’t the best choice (at least at the moment). So grab a spare USB stick and transfer one of HugeGreenBug’s special Linux distibutions for the Acer C720 on it. I used Ubuntu 15.04 as a base system. If you can spare it, give him some credit in form of a donation for his efforts setting all the driver stuff up for this special machine. Follow his installation instructions given on the site to install the OS.

Update the system via Terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Install the latest GNOME desktop environment (Heureka!):

sudo apt-get install gnome && sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

Uninstall the default desktop environment Unity:

sudo apt-get remove unity unity-asset-pool unity-control-center unity-control-center-signon unity-gtk-module-common unity-lens* unity-services unity-settings-daemon unity-webapps* unity-voice-service

Make it shine! Download the Ozon OS Shell, the Ozon OS GTK theme and unzip booth into the same folder. Now run following commands to install it:

sudo chmod 777 ‘/usr/share/themes’
sudo apt-get install ruby
cd ‘~/Downloads/ozon-gtk-theme-master’
sudo gem install sass
make
sudo make install
cd 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme “Ozon” && gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme “Ozon” && gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal 
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:numix/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install numix-icon-theme numix-icon-theme-circle

Now, push your search button (over the shift button) to enter GNOME’s dashboard, type “Firefox” and hit enter. Visit https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/19/user-themes/ and activate it.

Launch the GNOME dashboard again, type “tweak” and hit enter. Select “Appearence” and choose “Numix-Circle under Icons and the folder of your downloaded Ozon OS shell theme.

Now restart your system. You can customize it for some more hours if you want to, I won’t stop you. Have fun! I just want to give some last instructions to install some important applications. Inkscape (Vector) and Gimp (Pixel) should be preinstalled with Ubuntu and GNOME. Beside these there are also web services to take into consideration such as the brandnew Gravit.io. If you need a simple wireframing tool, use this package of Pencil for Ubuntu. To install Git, Skype, Sublime Text and FileZilla, run following commands:

Git

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git

Skype

sudo add-apt-repository “deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner” && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install skype

Sublime Text 3

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-3 && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sublime-text-installer

FileZilla

sudo apt-get install filezilla

Color calibration

The Acer’s display isn’t one of the best around. Unfortunately, it’s a TN-Panel, which you will find in most under 1000 € laptops. To make it a little bit better, I will run a calibration with a color calibration tool when I have the opportunity. Until then I will have to live with my subjective settings I made on a visual basis. To do the same, install xcalib:

sudo apt-get install xcalib

Push the Search button, type “Startup Applications” and open it. Now go to “add”, choose a name and type

bash -c ‘sleep 6 && xcalib -red 1.1 2.25 100 -green 1.1 1.9 100 -blue 1.1 0 100 -alter’

into the command field. Now the colors will be adjusted when you reboot your machine. You can play around with the values in command line. Checkout this page for further information. As I said: I will and you should perform a professional color calibration to make the display as good as possible. But you won’t be able to get the full sRGB-spectrum.

Finished!

Now you have an eight hour lasting, lightweight, cheap and rugged laptop. I personally feel awesome using Ubuntu on this small machine. And, more importantly, I get my shit done. These days Linux can be a very good looking environment which becomes crucial regarding my efficiency. It just don’t stands in my way anymore.

Remember to keep the incompatible Adobe software in mind. You’ve got to prepare things on your primary machine if you have to use Photoshop and InDesign. If you or your project partners/colleques use Balsamiq or Axure you should be able to install it via Wine.

The only thing I really miss is Bohemian Coding’s Sketch which is why I have a VM with OS X and Sketch on my primary machine. Don’t get me wrong, Inkscape is totally okay to work with, but it feels kind of outdated in many regards. I am positive that web apps such as atomic or Gravit can fill the gap of a cross platform vector tool in the near future.

Links

Acer C720 Ubuntu performance review
Acer C720 Engadget Review
Acer C720 The Verge review
Ubuntu GNOME overview
Reddit /r/chrubuntu
How to set up Git on Ubuntu

Update (January 2016)

Gallium OS is a Xubuntu-based distro for Chrome OS devices such as the Acer C720. I am using it for three days now and… well… it’s just awesome.