chromebook

[curious Mancilla]

is there a download or viewer i can use on a chromebook?

 

[Arthur Raleigh]

An infrequent update on this (I'll do them when I remember - if you're not interested or just want to say "you can't run SL on a Chromebook", why are you reading this?)

The last version of Firestorm that runs for me is 6.4.21.64531. Later versions seem to have a library dependency that causes a crash just before/during login - I think it's sound related but haven't managed to resolve it.

However, Kokua seems to work as an alternative in the Chromebook Linux environment and actually seems to render a bit faster than Firestorm did. It's not blisteringly fast, but it's good enough for occasional use. Don't expect to be able to use it for photography or video production, but if need something to let you dip into SL and you only have a an Intel-based Chromebook available, it's OK. Installation process for Kokua is similar to that described above for Firestorm.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Arthur Raleigh

[Arthur Raleigh]

On 8/15/2022 at 3:44 PM, Arthur Raleigh said:

An infrequent update on this (I'll do them when I remember - if you're not interested or just want to say "you can't run SL on a Chromebook", why are you reading this?)

The last version of Firestorm that runs for me is 6.4.21.64531. Later versions seem to have a library dependency that causes a crash just before/during login - I think it's sound related but haven't managed to resolve it.

However, Kokua seems to work as an alternative in the Chromebook Linux environment and actually seems to render a bit faster than Firestorm did. It's not blisteringly fast, but it's good enough for occasional use. Don't expect to be able to use it for photography or video production, but if need something to let you dip into SL and you only have a an Intel-based Chromebook available, it's OK. Installation process for Kokua is similar to that described above for Firestorm.

And another update. I've upgraded to a higher spec. Chromebook (8Mb RAM, Quad-core Pentium) and am now getting quite a reasonable graphics performance with Kokua (15fps). The lag and occasional crashes that I got on the dual-core 4Mb machine seem have disappeared.

[ananoelle]

Nope! 

[Nalates Urriah]

1 hour ago, curious Mancilla said:

is there a download or viewer i can use on a chromebook?

Chromebook units lack the render power needed for real  time 3D rendering. They are fine for web browsing and streamed video... video being prerendered. 

[cheesecurd]

On 5/15/2019 at 3:15 AM, Nalates Urriah said:

Chromebook units lack the render power needed for real  time 3D rendering. They are fine for web browsing and streamed video... video being prerendered. 

I know this is a dead thread but people google these things and dig up old threads all the time.

tl;dr, no, youre wrong and you dont know what youre talking about

The Intel HD 620 or 610 or whatever is on the low end celerons and i3's they put in cheap chromebooks is just the same as in any other cheap laptop. ChromeOS is just an OS, its what defines a chromebook. Replace chromeOS with anything else and you just have any other cheap laptop.

The hardware is there.

The reason theres no ChromeOS viewer is because the platform is segmented between a few different types of processor architectures and nobody could reasonably create an OS global viewer for it. As well as the fact that native chromeOS applications are a bit of a hassle to make and rely on google hosted dependencies. ChromeOS in the end is just a really stripped down version of linux, if you know what youre doing you can install the linux viewers onto ChromeOS directly but its not easy to do. You can also just do a chroot parallel installation of another linux distribution and install SL on that, or completely replace ChromeOS with another OS.

Nobody has made one because its difficult to do, still wouldnt be a matter of a double click to get it running for the end user, and the market just isnt there. Chromebooks are not a very big portion of the computer pie, its pretty much just schools these days that buy the large majority.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

Well, whether the limitation is the hardware or the software, the practical result is the same:  There are no SL viewers for Chromebooks, and there aren't likely to be any.

[Arthur Raleigh]

If you enable the Linux beta on a Chromebook, you can install the Linux Firestorm client. The key thing is to unpack in your Linux home directory, not the default Downloads directory. Once you've done that, it will run. If you get an error about a failed media plugin, you also need to install the Linux chromium browser to enable the Flash libraries that are missing.

 

[Arthur Raleigh]

On 5/15/2019 at 7:49 AM, ananoelle said:

Nope! 

Yep. I'm running it myself.

 

[Nionlight Miggins]

I have chromeos, I unpacked the Phoenix firestorm directory in the linux folder. How to make it working?

If I click on the firestorm file it just opens the program to read the file.

If I open a terminal and type ./firestorm it says access denied.

If I type sudo ./firestorm it says command not found.

 

How did you make it to run on chromeos?

[Arthur Raleigh]

From the terminal you need to run ./firestorm/firestorm

You should also have a Linux Apps icon group on your desktop and firestorm should be in there.

 

[oOJoselinOo]

you need to make that file executeable. then you should be able to start it with ./firestorm

[Love Zhaoying]

40 minutes ago, Arthur Raleigh said:

And another update. I've upgraded to a higher spec. Chromebook (8Mb RAM, Quad-core Pentium) and am now getting quite a reasonable graphics performance with Kokua (15fps). The lag and occasional crashes that I got on the dual-core 4Mb machine seem have disappeared.

Wow, so it works!

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Arthur Raleigh said:

And another update. I've upgraded to a higher spec. Chromebook (8Mb RAM, Quad-core Pentium) and am now getting quite a reasonable graphics performance with Kokua (15fps). The lag and occasional crashes that I got on the dual-core 4Mb machine seem have disappeared.

Is that 15fps on an empty region?  What are your graphics pref set at?  

[Arthur Raleigh]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Is that 15fps on an empty region?  What are your graphics pref set at?  

Well, it was on my home region which is fairly sparsely populated, but quite dense with objects.

I just TPed to a couple of places with 25 and 56 other avis present and still got around 15 fps. although they were a bit slow to rez and some appeared ghosted due to high complexity.

I just let the viewer self-optimise and everything's set close to minimum, but as I said before this is about being able to interact on a low-power long battery life machine, not having a full high-def immersive experience. The increase in cores and RAM seems to have eliminated the lag, stuttering and crashing that the two-core 4Mb machine suffered from. So, for use on the road, it's acceptable to me.

[Arthur Raleigh]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Wow, so it works!

It does - well enough for occasional use.

[Lindal Kidd]

On 9/6/2019 at 11:51 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

Well, whether the limitation is the hardware or the software, the practical result is the same:  There are no SL viewers for Chromebooks, and there aren't likely to be any.

My four year old remark has been overcome by events. Please ignore.