Issues:
- 1. Installer fails with a message - not enough memory
2. My apprehension that Mint 17 on a flash drive would be unacceptably slow
3. Kernels from the repo do not support the Chromebook touchpad
- Issue 1 - Kernel option mem=1500m added to the grub entry did the trick.
Issue 2 - used a USB 3 flash drive to improve speed (Chromebook has USB 3 ports). I also disabled desktop effects. Can confirm that my Mint 17 Cinnamon install on the USB runs the Chromebook as smoothly (if not smoother) than my Mint 17 XFCE hard drive install on an Acer Aspire One netbook. I've tested the heavy LibreOffice and Firefox apps.
Issue 3 - Installed kernel 3.17.4 (support for the Chromebook's touchpad was added since 3.17) following instruction from http://www.yourownlinux.com/2014/11/how ... linux.html. Touchpad did work.
Now it's an awesome piece of device that does more than web browsing - thanks to Linux Mint!
Other things I changed for the flash drive install according to suggestions I found:
- 1. Set swappiness to 0 -> apparently reduces wear and tear for the flash drive
2. added elevator=noop kernel parameter to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
Also I would appreciate any advice to further improve the flash drive install.