[PLUG] Chromebook for zoom

Jason Barnett jason.barnett71 at gmail.com
Wed Dec 2 01:17:42 UTC 2020


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 <keithl at kl-ic.com> 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          keithl at keithl.com
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>



More information about the PLUG mailing list