Hello, and welcome to Another Salesforce Blog!  Here I will be posting solutions to problems that I couldn’t find an answer to in hopes of helping those who find themselves stuck when using the Salesforce platform.

Disclaimer:

I am not affiliated with Google or any other brand mentioned, and I am making no money for this post. If you would like to give me money for this (or any other!) post, you can go to my contact page and make a donation.

So you’ve decided to buy a Chromebook.

Me too! I’ve actually had a cheap Asus Chromebook since 2015, and it’s still kicking, but I recently purchased a new Pixelbook as my new personal laptop and development notebook. I had previously rigged my little Asus to run Chrubuntu as a fun project, so when Google announced in 2019 that all Chromebooks will be Linux ready going forward, I was eager to try it out.

Okay, nerd.

Hey now, you’re the one reading this super niche blog post.

Fair enough, let’s get started.

Background

This tutorial starts from scratch, and is mostly for users who might be new to Linux and/or development on a Chromebook. If you consider yourself an advanced user, feel free to skip this one.

Step One – Buy a Linux capable Chromebook

I assume you’ve already got this one taken care of.

Step Two – Enable Linux (Beta)

Go to Settings, Linux (Beta), and turn it on. That’s it! Everything you need will install. If you ever decide to remove Linux apps from your machine, you can un-press the button, and everything will uninstall.

Step Three – Install Visual Studio Code

This one is pretty straightforward. Go to the Visual Studio Download page, and click the .deb button. This will download the .deb file. All you need to do to install is go to Downloads and double click it.

Once you double click, you will see the following:

Hit “Install,” and you’re good to go!

Step Four – Add SFDX Development Tools

Open up VSCode, click on the Extensions icon, and search for Salesforce Extension Pack. Basically, we’re following the instructions in the Setup Visual Studio Code Trailhead.

Hitting “Install” will also install the Salesforce CLI Integration package, which we will be setting up shortly.

Step Five – Install Salesforce CLI

Documentation to install the Salesforce CLI can be found here.

Open your Linux terminal, and enter the following command to download the tarball:

wget https://developer.salesforce.com/media/salesforce-cli/sfdx-linux-amd64.tar.xz

Next, type the following to create an sfdx directory:

mkdir sfdx

Unpack the tarball using the following command:

tar xJf sfdx-linux-amd64.tar.xz -C sfdx --strip-components 1

Did you get an error?

The reason for this error is because we haven’t installed the xz file decompression tool. This is probably the case if you haven’t installed any other Linux apps on your new Chromebook.

To install this tool, enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install xz-utils

Now, try the previous command again.

Lastly, run the install command:

./sfdx/install

Now, we can use the sfdx command to verify our install and run the CLI!

Type sfdx force to see resources for Salesforce Developers:

There you have it.

For the seasoned Chromebook user or Linux professional, this process is a breeze. For those who are new to either, hopefully this helped! Now you’ll be able to use your Chromebook for Salesforce Development.

Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any comments or questions!

-Evelyn, Another Salesforce Blog