It depends on exactly which HP chromebook you bought, but you may already be able to install Linux on it. https://mrchromebox.tech/
I use Zoom daily for work on a linux machine, but I steadfastly refuse to install their app. I just connect to the website, enter the name I want to appear and the meeting passcode. No install, no login. Works without issue. Have you tried this route vs. installing their app? Jason On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 4:44 PM Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> wrote: > My wife uses zoom for web-meetings with clients, friends, > and family. There's no native zoom app for the CentOS- > derivative Linux I use. > > Zoom did work with CentOS and the Chrome browser plus a > plugin, which changed unpredictably and frequently, along > with the dependencies required to make it work. That took > hours. Worse, Zoom plugins are closed source, which I try > to avoid on my otherwise open-source machines. Worst, > combined with Chrome but NOT with protocol speedups, Zoom > was a bandwidth hog. > > The most recent attempt at a plugin upgrade took hours of > fruitless work, but failed - it just hung, no diagnostics. > We missed Thanksgiving with my wife's east-coast family. > > So - I did the dirty, and bought an bottom-of-the-line > HP Chromebook. $181, plus a $15 USB/C-to-ethernet dongle. > It arrived Monday morning; I had it configured in less > than an hour. Licence and EULA reading, mostly, a bit of > tweaking, like increasing font sizes for old eyes. Zoom > was a 10 second install. My wife used it that afternoon > for a web-meeting. > > We won't store data on the Chromebook, nor passwords for > anything besides Google and Chrome apps. Certainly no > banking, or passwords for other machines. We connect it > directly to the cable modem, outside our firewall; it > cannot connect to other machines inside the firewall, > unless we move data on a microSD card. Although the > Chromebook resembles a laptop, we will treat it more like > a zero-monthly-fee telephone. > > I don't have source code for my phones, either. If the > Chromebook does get compromised, we restore to original > factory configuration, retweek, and change passwords. > > Chromebook includes automatic updates for the next 5 1/2 > years. So, /if/ the beast keeps working (a measly 1 year > warranty), we are paying $3 a month for Zoom, and > OverDrive books from the library. > > While I would much prefer to use open source, community- > managed tools to connect to Zoom and Overdrive, an > appliance designed for those services is an inferior but > tolerable substitute. If by some miracle this one-year- > warranty "laptop" survives past the end of updates in > 2026, I hope our creative hacker community will develop > something much better to install in place of ChromeOS. > After all, the old x86 hardware I am using now was > designed and marketed for Windoze. > > Keith > > -- > Keith Lofstrom [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
