Chromebook Pixel

The Pixel is fully supported by crouton with only a few minor caveats you need to keep in mind.

When issuing the command to build your chroot, you will want to add -t touch to your command. If you are adding a desktop environment target such as Xfce or Unity, you can combine it with touch via something like -t touch,xfce.

Be aware that until your favorite window manager supports high-DPI displays, results may vary. Users are having good luck using Xfce with a few minor tweaks:

Option #1 - Use X11's -dpi flag:

1. sudo enter-chroot
2. Copy /etc/crouton/xserverrc-local.example to /etc/crouton/xserverrc-local, uncomment the XARGS line and modify the DPI value.

Option #2 change dpi settings in Xfce:

Support for dpi changes are quite spotty... but this way you get to keep text sharp.

1. In Xfce, right-click the desktop and choose Desktop Settings.
2. In Icons tab, increase the icon size. Recommended: 72.
3. Close the window.
4. Right-click the desktop and choose Applications > Settings > Appearance.
5. In the Icons tab, select Humanity, Humanity-Dark, or Tango. GNOME icons are not resolution independent.
6. In Fonts tab, enable Custom DPI and set it to 150, or adjust to your liking.
7. Close window.
8. Right-click the desktop and choose Applications > Settings > Panel.
9. Use the slider to increase the size of the panel. Recommended for ease of touch: 72.
10. Close the window.
11. Get a HiDPI Window Manager theme (https://github.com/mntmn/xfce4-hidpi-theme)
12. Extract in /usr/share/themes/
13. Enable it: Applications > Settings > Window Manager .
14. Switch the GTK style: Applications > Settings > Appearance > Style .

This should give you an interface normal humans are capable of working with. If you have any more tips, please share them!

Option #3 change resolution

Trades the extreme definition for a more standard resolution that works perfectly with any window manager. You can use the included setres script to change your resolution to something custom. The script does not do sanity-checking, so you may end up with a blank screen and have to kill the chroot from Chromium OS if you give a strange resolution. Some examples:

setres 1920 1280
setres 1680 1120
setres 1440 960
setres 1280 850

You can make one of these resolutions persistent by following these steps:

1. Generate a modeline:

cvt 1920 1280 60

It will output something like:

Modeline "1920x1280_60.00"  206.25  1920 2056 2256 2592  1280 1283 1293 1327 -hsync +vsync

2. Create a 10-monitor.conf file:

sudo vim /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf

You should get something like this:

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier "Monitor0"
  Modeline "1920x1280_60.00"  206.25  1920 2056 2256 2592  1280 1283 1293 1327 -hsync +vsync
EndSection
Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Screen0"
  Device "eDP1"
  Monitor "Monitor0"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth 24
    Modes "1920x1280_60.00" "1280x960"
  EndSubSection
EndSection

If you want a different screen resolution, replace the Modeline line with the one generated by cvt for you, and add the mode to the Modes line.

Option #4 set screen size on Xorg so that dpi goes up to 240

Add a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-monitor.conf to explicitly set the screen size, i.e. containing

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier             "<default monitor>"
    DisplaySize            270 180    # In millimeters
EndSection

These numbers are actually taken from the Xorg log file in /var/log -- no clear to me why the correct numbers don't end up being used. Not all apps handle this correctly

Gnome and Unity Troubleshooting

Sometimes when running in {gnome,unity}-xiwi, your session may get stuck with a dialog box complaining about the followings

   Could not apply the stored configuration for monitors
   none of the selected modes were compatible with the possible modes:
   Trying modes for CRTC 63
   CRTC 63: trying mode 1024x768@85Hz with output at 2200x1508@60Hz (pass 0)
   CRTC 63: trying mode 2048x1536@85Hz with output at 2200x1508@60Hz (pass 0)
   CRTC 63: trying mode 2048x1536@75Hz with output at 2200x1508@60Hz (pass 0)
   CRTC 63: trying mode 2048x1536@60Hz with output at 2200x1508@60Hz (pass 0)
   CRTC 63: trying mode 1920x1440@85Hz with output at 2200x1508@60Hz (pass 0)
   CRTC 63: trying mode 1920x1440@75Hz with output at 2200x1508@60Hz (pass 0)
   ... 

The solution (found here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1852813) is to simply remove your ~/.config/monitors.xml.

   sudo enter-chroot
   mv .config/monitors.xml .config/monitors.xml.bkp

Then restart your session.