My Acer C720 runs Ubuntu Linux, but every boot I have to manually pick SeaBIOS to start from the SSD. So I usually just close the lid and let it sleep. But as the saying goes, if you keep doing dumb shit, dumb shit happens—and that’s exactly what happened. Opened it today and SeaBIOS was gone. Hit Ctrl + L after boot, the machine beeped twice and then nothing. Looked it up: Chromebook BIOS settings are kept alive by battery power. Once the battery is completely dead, my SeaBIOS legacy boot option reverts to default, and I’m locked out. Is there a fix? Yep. Reflash ChromeOS, reinstall Ubuntu Linux, and remember not to let the battery die again. Want a permanent fix? Sure—you have to open the thing up and defeat the hardware write protection. Thought about it and it’s too much hassle. Disassembly also hurts my chances of selling this thing later, so I’ll just set up normal boot for now and flash SeaBIOS when I have time.

The Acer Chromebook C720 is a Chromebook, and as the name suggests, it runs Chrome OS. Chrome OS isn’t actually bad, but for one thing I’m a Firefox user, and for another, Chrome OS needs to be online to activate on first boot. Activation works like ChromeCast: you need some circumvention. I tried a VPN and it promptly locked my Google account, claiming an abnormal login IP. Fine, whatever — I couldn’t be bothered to deal with it, so I just wiped the thing and installed Linux. Putting full-blown Linux on a Chromebook isn’t news. Some people use Chroot to switch between the whole system and Chrome OS, others like me just kill Chrome OS and start fresh. The former isn’t much different from the latter in practice; I’m just fussy about it.