Bodhi can best be described as a lightweight Linux flavor coded to run across a wide range of hardware.
Recently, the versatile operating system was modded by Bodhi dev Jeff Hoogland to run on Samsung’s stalwart $250 Chromebook – which is powered by Samsung’s ARM-based Exynos Cortex-A15 processor.
Although Hoogland released an earlier version of the port, Liliputing’s Brad Linder confirms the install process is still fairly straightforward.
First off, the Chromebook must be placed into developer mode, which effectively wipes out local data while keeping the operating system intact.
You then connect to the internet, activate a terminal, download and run the Bodhi installer which painlessly walks you through the rest of the process – much like installing Ubuntu via the ARM ChrUbuntu utility.
Now once Bodhi is up and running, you’ll have an ARM-powered Chromebook with Google’s cloud-centric Chrome OS and Bhodi Linux. Best of all, you can switch between the two operating systems simply by entering a terminal command.
The Chromebook can be returned to its factory default by exiting developer mode and having the system reset itself.
It should be noted that although Bodhi runs well on Samsung’s $250 ARM-based laptop, the current build lacks support for hardware-accelerated graphics, which will undoubtedly affect some games and certain applications.
Nevertheless, Linux aficionados may want to give Bodhi a try, if only for the experience. Plus, the OS should be fine for running non-graphics intensive apps.
