Cadmium, A Linux distro installer for some RISC laptops

Thanks @LoganMD for the logo

Pre-requisites

User

• Patience and time.
• A working Linux machine.
• Familiarity with Cadmium's wiki.
• Join Cadmium's Discord server.

Linux System

If you plan to compile, ensure your build system meets the following requirements (Debian is recommended, but not mandatory):

• A working LLVM toolchain.
• Build dependencies for kernel compilation.
• debootstrap (if using a Debian root filesystem).
• qemu-user-static with binfmt support (for cross-architecture builds).
• Firmware-specific packages:
  • For Chromebook machines with stock boot firmware: vboot-utils, u-boot-tools (includes vbutil_kernel, futility, cgpt, and mkimage).
  • For EFI machines: ukify (usually included in systemd-boot or a related package).
• bc for calculating the number of threads for compilation.
• curl for downloading the kernel.
• bsdtar for writing archive files (from the libarchive-tools package).
• f2fs-tools for creating the filesystem used by Cadmium.
• parted for preparing the GPT table to be modified by cgpt.
• rsync for copying files.

To check if your build system meets the minimum requirements, run ./check. If the output is empty, you're set!

Alternatively, you can use the available releases if they are recent enough.

• tar for extracting the archive.
• dd for flashing the image onto the pendrive.

Target Chromebook (Stock Firmware)

1. Enter Developer Mode. Google provides a guide.
2. Enable booting from USB:
   • Boot into ChromeOS (guest account is fine).
   • Access VT-2 (virtual terminal 2) by pressing ctrl + alt + F2.
   • Login to root or chronos without a password.
   • Run the following command:

   sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 dev_boot_signed_only=0

3. It's also highly recommended you change a few gbb flags to avoid losing your data unexpectedly (more info can be found on GitHub).
4. If you plan to keep ChromeOS, it's recommended to disable the root account and set a password for the user chronos using:

chromeos-setdevpasswd

Compiling

1. Edit config to reflect your board.
2. Run build-all on your build system:
   • To build to a file:

   ./build-all <file> <size>  # 8G should be sufficient

   • To build directly onto a pendrive or external drive:

   ./build-all /dev/<disk>

Installing

1. Get your pendrive ready, if it isn't already:
   • Flash the image file you compiled previously.
   • Alternatively, extract and flash cadmium-<device>.img.xz from releases to your pendrive.
2. Shut your target machine down, then boot to USB.
3. Once booted, run:

./install

to install Cadmium onto the target storage medium. An internet connection is required.

4. If you're already running Cadmium and wish to update the kernel, simply run:

./install-kernel

from a pendrive running a newer release.

Note that Binary drivers are unsupported in Cadmium and never will be.