What Is GalliumOS

At the beginning of this year’s semester I needed a portable PC and had very little money to spend, so I couldn’t afford a full-size laptop. I settled on a little refurbished Acer Chromebook, that was under $100. One of the reasons I chose the Chromebook was because I learned that if one chooses to use a different OS, the process for installing a light weight Linux OS seemed pretty straightforward.

Chromebooks come with the Chrome OS installed, which is a cloud based open source OS used primarily accessing the web: browsing, emailing, social networking etc. Although, it is a great little OS, I found there were times when certain programs either weren’t available, or if they were, didn’t have the capabilities I needed. For example, Google Docs easily converts MS Word documents to the Google Doc format however, saving a Google Doc in the MS Word format (required for my courses) isn’t so simple. Hence, my decision to install a Linux OS.

After searching, reading reviews and checking out the forums I settled on a fairly new Linux OS, that's tweaked especially for Chromebooks, called GalliumOS. I had tinkered with other installations of Linux on a few older, “relic” laptops that I had laying around, but hadn’t really gotten far enough to use them for everyday tasks. Providing one locates the correct directions for their model of Chromebook, the process of installing GalliumOS is on the lower side of a medium difficulty. Not for a beginner, but easy enough for someone with basic computer knowledge and a little patience. As with most Linux OS distros, I had to download the ISO file, and another program of my choice that would write the ISO file to a USB drive, making it bootable, similar to how a DVD of an OS installation disk works. Another example of a task that I needed my desktop for as it wasn't possible from the Chrome OS.

Once installed GalliumOS ran smoothly and fast. Everything works fine and I have had no issues with the software. It comes with a built-in package manager, and I was able to download Abiword, an open source word processor that allows me to save documents in a MS Word format. I also looked around and read reviews for few different text editors for coding in my html class. GalliumOS comes with Gedit built in, but I decided to try Lime Text which is an open source solution similar to the popular program Sub Lime. I really dug Lime Text it was definitely my favorite.

All-in-all I GalliumOS  is really awesome.  As with any open source software there is a slight learning curve which I consider to be more an acclimation period i.e learning navigation, where are located, and what applications replace the Windows applications we are all so accustomed to using. The GalliumOS team has done an awesome job. There is a whole “additional software” section on the GalliumOS Wiki, that includes instructions for installing and using Adobe Flash, Skype, various games and many other application choices. The jackpot, icing on the cake was my discovery of the Reddit Noobies Guide; what to do after installing GalliumOS.

As a side note; this term, I was finally able to purchase a 17” laptop that would meet my requirements for work and school. I currently have my hard drive partitioned to boot from either Win 7 (required for work) or Win 10. Apple, in their awesomeness, has made the effort, with the creation of Boot Camp to allow Windows to install, boot and run on their architecture without, as in the past, having to use the Parallels desktop environment. The client I contract for requires Win 7 and due to licensing restrictions, costs, and total frustration with the above mentioned, which could make a whole other blog post, I am not willing to purchase YET another copy of Win 7 to install on my iMac or Mac Mini. However, the hard drive on my new laptop is huge and when time permits, I plan to add a 3rd partition in which to install Elementary OS, as it is a beautiful open source Linux OS, that most closely resembles Mac OS X. Of course, since I am an absolute “Cult of Apple” fanatic, I can’t wait to try it.