The following announcement was written by rootstrust

Chromebooks have become ubiquitous in the last few years. You can buy a very respectable Chromebook with a 14” screen, 4 GB of RAM and a 64 GB SSD or eMMC (solid state drive) for around $200. Let’s call this configuration the minimal Chromebook. Chromebooks run Google’s ChromeOS operating system which is similar enough to Windows, macOS and Linux that an experienced computer user can become proficient at it in a relatively short period of time.

ChromeOS users by default have access to Google Docs, YouTube and Google Drive. Due to the popularity of the Chromebook, more cloud based, ChromeOScompatible applications are becoming available, for example Microsoft Office 365, Spotify, Netflix and VLC.

The minimal Chromebook is so popular due to its reasonable price, however its limited memory and internal storage can be restrictive when it comes to selecting Linux software applications to augment the ChromeOS suite of apps.

Earlier versions of ChromeOS supported an application programming interface for developing native ChromeOS software, however Google took away that capability several years ago. Now if you want to develop your own applications for a Chromebook, you have to turn to Linux. As opposed to cloud base applications, these programs reside on the Chromebook.

If you would like to run Linux applications under ChromeOS, you can turn on the ‘Linux development environment’ in ChromeOS settings which triggers the installation of a skeletal version of Debian Linux that they call Crostini. Crostini is not a complete operating system having no utilities, apps or GUI (graphical user interface) – all you get is a command line interface called Penguin. However, via Penguin you can add utilities, apps and a file manager like nemo which has its own limited GUI desktop.

There are few full-featured genealogy programs available for Linux and fewer still that can adapt to the limited resources of a minimal Chromebook. rootstrust since it appeared on the market in 2013 has always been available preinstalled on a universal flash drive, that is a flash drive that is usable on Windows, macOS and Linux. Recently, ChromeOS/Crostini has been added to that list. When rootstrust runs from a universal flash drive, it uses only the processor and the internal memory (RAM) of the host computer but none of its internal storage (SSD/eMMC). This is especially significant for a minimal Chromebook, since rootstrust database and its associated File Cabinets (its collection of linked document and multimedia files) can take up as much as 28 GB if storage space for a database of 10,000 persons.

The rootstrust icons on the nemo desktop running under ChromeOS/Crostini

Most Chromebooks are equipped with either an SD or a microSD card reader slot.

rootstrust is also available preinstalled on a universal SDXC or microSDXC memory cards that function the same way as the universal flash drives. Using one of these cards on a Chromebook frees up the USB port that would be otherwise housing the universal rootstrust flash drive. Each universal memory card comes with a memory card to USB adapter that has a USB-A plug at one end and a USB-C plug at the other end. When either an SD card or microSD card has been inserted into the adapter, it can function as a pseudo flash drive. Why do you need a flash drive if you are running rootstrust from a memory card? Answer: In case you would like to run rootstrust on a different computer that has no card reader.

If you want to either install rootstrust on ChromeOS/Crostini or run it from a flash drive or memory card, you will have to do the following:

1. Turn on Linux Development Environment.

2. Install the nemo file manager or a different one of your choice.

3. Install a text editor and the necessary apps for displaying/editing word processing files, PDFs, image files and video files.

rootstrust.com has detailed, step-by-step instructions with multiple screenshots forthese operations in a downloadable PDF file. In addition, the website has a collection of ten YouTube videos covering the same material.

rootstrust running from a microSDXC card on a minimal Chromebook

Screen capture of the above ChromeOS/Crostini session