How to Install on a New Acer Chromebook CB315-4H N21Q9

[J&NLarson]

Revised

Hello! We hope you are (all) doing well.

We are working with the Acer Community Forum to get Penguin up and running on our laptop.

Once we do, what are the exact instructions for installing Free Office on this Chromebook? The instructions available online are not very clear.

Please let us know as soon as possible. The owner of this Chromebook is an author and needs at least word processing software.

Thank you very much!

[J&NLarson]

The instructions on Free Office's installation page say to enter these commands:

su -c "apt update && apt install -y curl"
su -c "curl -fsSL https://softmaker.net/down/install-soft ... ce-2024.sh | bash"

We did and received the response,

Password:

Please clarify. We downloaded the installation file to Downloads also.

[SuperTech]

Thank you for your post.

Chromebooks are not officially supported, but our Chromebook blog article describes a possible installation using Linux.

[J&NLarson]

I am not sure what is meant by the section between double *s:

**From the Apps overview, choose the folder "Linux apps",** open the "Terminal" app and launch the install process with the following two lines:

sudo apt update
sudo dpkg -i softmaker-office-2021_1022-01_amd64.deb

I tried to run the two command lines and got error messages.

Please advise. I am not an IT person by any means!

[J&NLarson]

Here is everything I typed in Terminal and the replies I got.

thejohnlarson1@penguin:~$ ^[[200~sudo apt update
-bash: $'\E[200~sudo': command not found
thejohnlarson1@penguin:~$ sudo dpkg -i softmaker-office-2021_1022-01_amd64.deb~
dpkg: error: cannot access archive 'softmaker-office-2021_1022-01_amd64.deb~': No such file or directory
thejohnlarson1@penguin:~$ ^[[200~sudo apt install -f~
-bash: $'\E[200~sudo': command not found
thejohnlarson1@penguin:~$ sudo apt install -f~
E: Command line option '~' [from -f~] is not understood in combination with the other options.

Is there a way to copy and paste the commands SoftMaker provides in the Terminal app without receiving the additional ^[[200- ahead of them?

[J&NLarson]

I just entered one of the command lines and got this:

thejohnlarson1@penguin:~$ sudo dpkg -i softmaker-office-2021_1022-01_amd64.deb~
dpkg: error: cannot access archive 'softmaker-office-2021_1022-01_amd64.deb~': No such file or directory

[GrahamW_Sheff64]

ahh that tilde at the end, thats your problem mate. filename ends in a squiggle so dpkg goes looking for a file that doesnt actually exist on disk... had exactly this with a mate of mine trying to get something going on his missus's chromebook for her allotment accounts spreadsheet, drove him up the wall for a good hour. turned out hed copied the filename off the softmaker page and it had that extra ~ tacked on the end, probably from how the terminal pasted it in. do an `ls` in your Downloads folder first and see what the file is actually called, then type the dpkg command again matching that exactly rather than copying it off the website. saved him a right headache that did, worth a pint to whoever spots these daft little typos

[GrahamW_Sheff64]

J&NLarson, in my experience it was the apostrophes that got me, not the tilde... copied a command off a blog once and it had them curly quotes instead of straight ones, terminal just sat there moaning about syntax till I retyped it manually. Worth doing an `ls` like Graham said, but also try typing the command out by hand rather than pasting if owt looks dodgy still.

[GrahamW_Sheff64]

ahh yeah, filename gremlins... had a daft one years back trying to get some driver software onto an old netbook for me mam, kept copying commands off a forum and every time it fell over with some "file not found" nonsense. turned out word wrap on the page had split one line in two and id only copied half of it, took me donkeys to clock that. always worth just typing the tricky bit by hand when teh terminal starts moaning like that