Out of the box, they only accept Google OS updates. For reference, the OS is basically Gentoo+Chrome.<p>If you&#x27;ve a mind to, you can put the Chromebook in &quot;developer mode&quot; with a magic sequence of commands (requiring physical access as it&#x27;s a boot procedure). This gives you root. To protect naive users from being exploited, a Chromebook in developer mode will display a nasty warning on boot. This warning lingers on the screen for an annoying amount of time, accompanied by a beep. The only way (and it&#x27;s undocumented) of skipping the wait and the beep is with Ctrl-D; pressing any other key while on this screen results in the Chromebook being completely reset. All this is to ensure that it&#x27;s virtually impossible to run under developer mode unintentionally.<p>If all this gets too annoying and you want to use the Chromebook as a fully general device, you can blow it away by replacing the bootloader. Doing this requires disabling write-protection on the flash, which requires opening the case.<p>Disclaimer: I own a Samsung ARM Chromebook. For all I know the precise details may vary across the Chromebook line, though I believe they all work similarly. Fuller details are here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chromium.org&#x2F;chromium-os&#x2F;developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices&#x2F;samsung-arm-chromebook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chromium.org&#x2F;chromium-os&#x2F;developer-information-f...</a>