Installed EOS in Dell Chromebook 11 (3120) (board name: CANDY) - stuck on black screen on first boot(s)

General system Newbie
1

My friend gave me her Dell Chromebook 11 (3120) (board name: CANDY) and I installed the current EndeavourOS ISO image using offline install (so it’s KDE). It installed fine but when I boot up, I got stuck with this image where it’s just the mouse pointer and a cursor and a blank screen.

PXL_20240713_014438426
PXL_20240713_0144384261920×1442 151 KB

I can move the mouse pointer okay but I don’t know how to troubleshoot this as there are no F1, F2, F3, etc, keys.

Any tips how to proceed would be helpful.

Thank you!

2

Looks like login manager does not want to start.

Ctrl + Alt + F2 will bring you into console, where you can login.

You can then do inxi -bz and post here this output (or picture I guess).

You can also check logs journalctl -b -r to see what failed.

You could just try install with XFCE maybe ?

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Thank you. Problem is, in Chromebook, there is no F1, F2, F3, etc keys.

I had it resolved by installing LXQT and actually installing the tiny 16GB harddisk itself. You see, the original installation was installed in the SD card, which I think was the root of the problem.

It’s now working fine, just that the harddisk space is really small.

Thank you either way for replying :smiley:

4

I haven’t messed around with (other forms of) Linux on Chromebooks, but the physical layout of the keys isn’t much different than conventional laptops of the same size. I would not be surprised if the back, forward, and other keys on the top row are actually the F keys but mapped to those functions within ChromeOS.

If not, maybe try plugging in an external keyboard which has F keys, using a USB-C to A adapter if you have to, may work for console-jumping for debugging purposes.

I see you got it working, but I’d keep these little hints in mind just in case something else goes wrong.

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Wow, interesting.

16 GB of hard disk? Wow, I admire you! Maybe you could try ArchBang which is distro aimed at being smalll.

But I hope you can install apps and have home directory on SD card

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I actually would like to test Archbang but looks like I would need the Super/Window key to get things around because of the desktop environment. Super/Window key is not present in Chromebooks like mine sadly :frowning:

I think I’m gonna stick with EndeavourOS’ LXQT for now. Less than 8GB free space after initial install. I guess it’s not that bad.

Thank you either way for your responses!