Have a look on the menu on the right hand side for ‘Linux (Beta)’ Open the main settings menu by clicking on the time in the bottom right then clicking the cog wheel icon. Enabling Linux on Chrome OSįirstly, we need to establish if you have a Chromebook capable of running Linux. It’s all just a description of a beta feature of Chrome OS and some Linux commands, but the results are still pretty cool. We’ll go through how to install it in a moment, but I just wanted to start by saying that there are no real tricks in any of this. So well in fact, that I thought I’d see if I could install the desktop version of RStudio on it, just for fun. It’s only a beta at the minute, but it seems to work really well. Chrome OS itself is actually based on Linux, but it’s not really exposed to the user. Recently however, Google introduced beta support for running Linux on top of Chrome OS. I use this a lot as it’s great for editing all sorts of files, not just R and it also has a terminal and file manager so I can be extremely productive with it. I have a Chrome extension installed that handles the SSH and then I have a RStudio Server on my Linux server. There are many pros and cons to this model, but fortunately for me, a browser and an SSH terminal is pretty much all I need. Chrome OS is an operating system built around the Chrome browser. My Chromebook isn’t the newest or the most powerful, but it allows me to get stuff done and is fun to use, so I’m pretty happy with it.įor those who don’t know, a Chromebook is essentially a laptop with Google’s Chrome OS on it instead of Windows or MacOS. Outside of work I generally use a Chromebook for most stuff, along with a Linux server (with RStudio Server on it) to mess around, learn new things and work on my various personal projects. As someone who deals primarily with R infrastructure, this usually revolves around Linux and RStudio Server and the rest of R’s ecosystem.

I use R both inside and a outside of work quite a bit.

Download rstudio