in order to get these images to even boot on your device there are some steps you need to do, below you can see all the required steps

Note. before getting your device to boot you might be interested in looking at device specyfic notes

Warning. this step will WIPE ALL YOUR DATA from you chromebook so if you have anything of value there, pls copy it somewhere else

on laptops

hold [esc]+[refresh] and press [power]/[lock]

on tablets

turn off your device and

hold [volume-up]+[volume-down] and press [power]

after your devices finishes you will be able to access console from chrome os

by pressing [ctrl] [alt] [->] or [ctrl] [alt] [refresh] or [ctrl] [alt] [f2]

or

going into browser an opening

chrome-untrusted://crosh

then typing

shell

Note. on the first boot screen there will be a button to enable debug mode, don't do that unless you know what you are doing since it's not needed to access the console and may make doing it more difficult

if you are planning to set gbb flags right away you don't have to do this.

after enabling developer mode go into console

and type

sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 dev_boot_signed_only=0

doing that will enable you to boot from usb/sd card by pressing [ctrl]+[U] at boot menu

or chosing boot from external device on tablets (developer options->boot from external device)

or

you should have succesfully booted into the operating system 🎉

good job ❤️

Note. after first boot there are some commands you might want to run

well now that you've managed to boot the system you might want to install it directly onto the device especially if you used usb (usb for reasons has way slower read/write speed than sd card or chromebooks internall memory)

Note. but before doing it, we recommend you to set gbb flags on your device so when battery runs dry you won't lose access to your system

Disclaimer. when you install the content of thses linux images onto the internal storage (mostly emmc, in the future maybe sometimes nvme) of an arm chromebook, everything on the internal storage will be deleted and is lost and one should backup all data from the internal storage.

Tip. for information about the restoration process post install one can have a look here

- script - simple fully automated installation (arm64 chromebooks only)

- regular - the simplest one, will copy over content of medium (so the medium can be already preconfigured), system installed on your device disk will not be fully encrypted

- encrypted - your entire system will be encrypted, you will be forced to type password everytime you boot your device (not recommended for tablets since there is no on screen keyboard)

- dualboot - the system will be installed next to chromeos (in theory it can also be done agains any other linux distro or woa but why?). no encryption unless you fuse this guide with encrypted one.