14 DAY TRIAL // It would appear that there's now a special, unofficial edition of the Ubuntu Linux operating system optimized for Chromebook and Chromebox computers that are powered by an Intel Haswell processor.
The operating system is based on the current stable release of the world's most popular distribution, Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet), and has been tested with the Dell Chromebook 11 (Wolf), Acer C720 (Peppy), HP Chromebook 14 (Falco), Asus Chromebox (Panther), HP Chromebox (Panther), and HP Chromebox (Zako) computers.
Having the main goal of proving to be a flavor of Ubuntu Linux where everything works out of the box and is on par with Google's Chrome OS, Ubuntu 15.04 for Haswell Chromebooks/Chromeboxes includes many attractive features, such as Linux kernel 3.19.6, a Chrome OS touchpad driver that has been configured for each of the aforementioned Chromebooks, as well as various desktop tweaks.
Additionally, it offers modified versions of the Unity Control Center and Unity Settings Daemon packages to support the Chrome OS mouse driver, the Distroshare updater tool, which can be used to update the configuration files, several patches for issues like WiFi performance, suspend, sound, etc., and numerous pre-installed packages that are not included in the default Ubuntu 15.04 distro, such as VLC Media Player, Compiz Config Settings Manager, Kodi, Steam for Linux, Unity Tweak Tool, and ubuntu-restricted add-ons.
Available for download as a 64-bit Live DVD
Ubuntu 15.04 for Haswell Chromebooks/Chromeboxes is created by user HugeGreenBug and distributed on the Distroshare website, where users can download a 64-bit Live DVD ISO image that they can write on a USB flash drive, which can be used to boot the operating system from the BIOS of the respective computer. Detailed installation instructions can be found on the project's page.