Tantalizingly close but yet so frustratingly far away.
Bottom line on top
The Asus Chromebook Flip C302CA is not the all in one swiss army knife I was hoping for. This probably applies to all Chromebooks but I do not want to extrapolate as I have not done enough homework how and where Chromebooks may differ by vendor.
The whole story
After many years my Nexus 7, yes one of the originals, was getting to the point where I needed a replacement. With the emergence of Android apps running on Chromebooks and the convenience of screens that flip 180 degrees I figured things are getting to the point where 1 device will be able to do the things that I want it to do. This includes music streaming from Amazon, which still requires Flash, go figure ugh, it is 2018 is it not? Anyway, the Flash requirement makes this a no go on a Linux box. But Google builds Flash into Chrome on Chromebooks and thus one of the things I'd like to have working works there. With the flipping screen reading books provides the tablet experience I was after and with Android apps running there is a chance to connect to an Airplane network and access the movie library, that part I have not tested yet and probably will not anytime in the near future because the third part of what I'd like to do, run Linux from an SD card, is apparently not an option, go figure.
On this Chromebook, and this may apply to all newer Chromebooks, it is no longer possible to boot from the SD card if the system on the SD card is not recognized as ChromeOS. What used to be "Developer Mode" on a Chromebook is now a "Developer Channel" and does not provide the "Developer Mode" features. I have one of the early Samsung Chromebooks where it was possible to boot off an SD card if the OS on it was not ChromeOS or one could enter crosh, then run the "shell" command to get a real shell and from there chroot to whatever was on the SD card. Well apparently someone decided that such features are not useful on a Chromebook, which is sad because the Linux kernel that runs there has no problems supporting any of this.
Insert lengthy angry soap box lamenting here!
Anyway, it's a shame that features that are, at least from my perspective, useful and perfectly reasonable get removed by people that presumably lack imagination or that still think in the mold that electronics need to be controlled by $Originator even after $Customer forked over $$ and thus the device no longer belongs to $Originator. It's a sad state of affairs. Anyway, given the limitation, only 2 of my 3 requirements are fulfilled, the Chromebook will not become my new travel companion, it's back to tablet and "standard" x86_64 laptop. The more things change the more they stay the same.
