HW Accelerated Linux under ChromeOS or Crostini on steroids - Chromebooks

Recently I purchased a shiny new Lenovo Ryzen 7 3700C chromebook with 16 gigs of ram and the dream of hardware accelerated Linux. ...and Google dashed my dreams pretty bad lol. I think most people know that if you try to enable gpu acceleration with an AMD computer, you're asking for seizure-inducing glitching.
I did notice some interesting things, though... scrcpy was able to stream my phone pretty flawlessly after I passed it over to Linux. The response was staggering, scrcpy was able to keep up with my phone screen updates with no lag. There was only 1 problem... the mouse icon was all glitched up. Sometimes, it was just a few random dots.. other times it was non-existent. Kinda depressing right?
After much research, it turns out that ChromeOS has an awesome mouse hack under the Accessibility section... It's called "Highlight mouse when moving." This was almost like the holy grail here! Using this feature makes a red circle around your mouse position whenever you move it.
Now, we're starting to have some fun! Scrcpy works perfectly here... so what else works? I tried multiple applications and I noticed that if the application renders the screen continuously, like a game, there are no graphics glitches ( other than the aforementioned mouse problem. ). That's great if all we want to do is play games in the Linux VM, but other applications, like firefox, are horrible glitchy messes. I ended giving Lenovo a 3* review because I felt there was soo much potential that Google left on the table because you have to reboot the system every time you switch from gpu acceleration to no gpu acceleration. It was enough to drive a guy batty.
Then I happened across an article that really intrigued me, someone installed Windows 10 on their Chromebook using qemu and it hit me like a light... I totally forgot that new Chromebooks supported NESTED KVM. I think it's a little too soon to run Windoze under Qemu because there are currently no Windows drivers for virgl acceleration. Linux.. OTOH... oh yes, Linux does support Virgl.
TLDR: I was disappointed with Google's implementation of the Linux VM and will briefly describe how to run a true HW accelerated Linux VM.
Step 1. Start up Linux (Beta) with as much hard drive space as you can... I'd say about 80% of your storage
Step 2. Enable Crostini gpu accereation using chrome://flags/#crostini-gpu-support => enabled
Step 3. Start up your Linux terminal and bring everything up to date: sudo apt update ; sudo apt upgrade
Step 4. Install libvirt following this guy's article: https://chromeunboxed.com/insalling-windows-on-chromebook-crostini-linux-kvm-qemu-virtual-machine/ ( obviously don't install Windoze 10 unless you're into that sort of thing )
Step 5. From here, grab your favorite Linux distro install cd. I prefer running Arch linux, so that's what I grabbed.
Step 6. From libvirt-manager, install your new VM using your Linux distro cd.
Step 7. For the most part, I'm not going to describe how to install Arch Linux or any distro but if you need a guide, Google is your friend. Be sure to set a Display Manager because you want a graphical user interface to log in to. <-- This is Critical
Step 8. Make sure your Linux distro is running fine, then you will want to add a couple of Kernel modules to load on boot: kvm & virtio-gpu. With Arch Linux, you would create a file under /etc/modules-load.d with 2 lines.. kvm and virtio-gpu. I called mine kvm.conf.. Literally, it looks like this:
kvm
virtio-gpu
Step 9. Reboot and make sure your distro starts up properly.
Step 10. If your distro boots properly, you will now go into the experimental ( but fun ) part of the excercise. It's time to modify some settings.
10A. Click on the Light Bulb icon to show your VM settings.
10B. Under CPU, check Copy Host Configuration
10C. Under Display Spice:
- Type: Spice Server
- Listen: None
- OpenGL: Checked
- System Chromium OS
10D. under Video Virtio:
- Model: Virtio
- 3d Acceleration: Checked
At this point, I wish you luck. It may take many reboots to get this working but if your GUI comes up then bring up a terminal window and grab the latest mesa-demos. In your terminal window, type: glxinfo -B. If this all worked out, it should say that you have accelerated graphics running Virgl.

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Followup:
After playing around for a while, I've settled on a specific layout for my Lenovo C13 Yoga Chromebook w/ the Ryzen 3700C.... It came with 16 gigs of ram and a 256 gig ssd from DirectDial.
Lenovo C13 Yoga @ DirectDial
Firstly, the 2 biggest things in this system are: nested KVM and OpenGL passthrough acceleration ( VirGL ).
I ended up breaking up the machine into 3 logical areas:
Rung 0 - ChromeOS
Level 1 - Lobotomized ( Beta ) Linux and Android
Level 2 - Virtual Machines created under Level 1.
Rung 0 is what I use for normal, every day browsing and it's pretty darn good at that job
Level 1 is where a lot of the daily lifting goes... I use a bunch of linux apps and the Virgl support is great for gaming and things that require fast updates, like streaming my phone.
For the most part, Rung 0 and Level 1 are nearly indistinguishable.
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There is a major caveat with the VirGL support in Level 1 and that is the major graphics corruption that occurs with general UI ( user interace ) components. ie, you'll notice games and anything that updates the window a lot look pretty good and you can get decent framerates with the 3700C but "normal" windows can get majorly corrupted:
When I first received this wonderful little machine, the graphics corruption with VirGL really really disappointed me. Then I happened along a certain internet article detailing running a Windows 10 VM ( Virtual Machine ) under Level 1.
Article to install Windows 10 on Chromebook
This made me think... applications that refreshed the window a lot didn't suffer from VirGL graphics corruption really. I installed qemu and libvirt and set up a linux environment.
Initially, I used Arch linux in a perverse dream to run Windows inside the new linux VM using Virtualbox. Long story short, it was too much of a hassle because Virtualbox 6.1 requires KVM and nested KVM only goes down 2 levels. I did find that debian buster had Virtualbox 6.0 as an optional install, so I blew out the Arch VM and created a debian VM. It ran, but Windows 10 was just too unstable and would end up locking up my debian VM.
I had an epiphany and I realized with the copious storage + ram, I could just run 2 different VMs under Level 1: Linux & Windows 10.
btw, I purchased my Windows 10 Pro license from pcsalesonline.com for around $30, so if you want to run Windows 10 in a VM, I recommend them highly.
pcsalesonline.com Windows 10 license store page
I honestly believe that a decently powerful Chromebook is the future of computing and there's a rumor of a Chromebook with a dedicated gpu is in the works. Personally, I think someone should make a Chromebook with an integrated gpu for Rung 0 & Android and the option for a dedicated gpu to be passed to Level 1 using hardware passthrough.

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Part III: ( lol I know this is getting ridiculous )
This time, I installed Crouton, which is a chroot management system for ChromeOS. A chroot is a folder where another linux distribution is installed and "boots up" virtually. ( It pretends to boot up, but works as another linux distribution with some limitations )
Crouton chroots allow you to leverage the hardware in the Chromebook directly. In one sense, Crouton is easy both easy and hard to install.
1. Prepare to delete everything!!!!!! Crouton requires developer mode, which will reformat your Chromebook. <-- the hard thing I pointed out earlier. lol
2. Back up all of your important files. Either use an sd card, usb drive or google drive, but pull off all of your important files
3. Switch your chromebook into developer mode
4. Press CTRL + ALT + T to open a Terminal Window
5. type: shell ( to enter the developer shell )
6. ( Optional ) Purchase an sd card for your chroots, I purchased a 512gig one from Best Buy for $100
6a. ( Every reboot ): Unmount the sd card using the chromebook file explorer
6b. switch the partition type of your sd card from exfat ( normally ) to ext4 using fdisk
6c. format the sd card as ext4 using mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk....
6d. ( Every reboot ): sudo mkdir /media/sdcard
6e. ( Every reboot ): sudo mount /dev/mmcblk.... /media/sdcard
6f: type: sudo mkdir /media/sdcard/chroots
6g: type: sudo ln -s /dev/mmcblk.../chroots /usr/local/chroots
7. Download and install Crouton
At this point, you can use crouton to create your new unix chroot and play around. If things worked out for you, you'll have a fully working unix system with full hardware acceleration.
My dreams were dashed pretty quickly because X wouldn't even start up on my Lenovo C13 Yoga w/ a Ryzen 7 3700C processor. After much research, trial and error I came up with a pretty nice system.
Firstly, I created 2 different chroots:
1. minimal for creating a HW accelerated X server
2. full featured distribution to do the "real work".
The greatest advantage is that the Chromebook's Download folder is linked to each chroot.
Install these 2 packages in both chroots:
1. Sommelier - This will be our X server that spans all of our chroots
2. VirtualGL - This is a package allowing you run enhanced OpenGL across SSH. Basically, 2D elements will be rendered on the local X server and 3D elements will be rendered by X server running with the application.
In chroot 1, compile sommelier and perform all of the EXPORTS listed on the install page. It's also a good idea to add them to your .bashrc file. At this point, you should be able to start up sommelier:
$ sommelier --shm-driver=noop --data-driver=noop --no-exit-with-child --drm-device=/dev/dri/renderD128 --glamor /bin/sh -c '/etc/sommelierrc' &
You can leave chroot 1's terminal window alone now.
In chroot 2, you should export DISPLAY=:0 so x11 applications use the sommelier you started from chroot 1.
If you want to run Crostini apps from Linux (Beta) then you need to set a password to your Linux (Beta) Vritual Machine.
$ sudo su
# passwd <your Linux (Beta) username>
( type the password you want )
( repeat the password )
# exit
Install VirtualGL
As ROOT, run: /opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglserver_config
I suggest selecting N for all of the options.
Now, type: ip a to find your Linux (Beta) ip address. It'll look something like:
5: [email protected]: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:16:3e:93:a6:e9 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
inet 100.115.92.196/28 brd 100.115.92.207 scope global eth0
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::216:3eff:fe93:a6e9/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet 100.115.92.196 is the ip address in this case.
from chroot #2, you can now connect to Crostini ( Linux (Beta) ) using the command:
$ vfglconnect -s <your Linux (Beta) username>@<your Linux (Beta) ip address>
If you want to run a game or some software that has graphical issues normally, you can now run them using:
$ vglrun <software name>
I noticed that glx gaming is about 30-40 fps going this route vs 60 fps using Linux (Beta), but if you read the previous posts, you'll understand that GPU acceleration can really jack up graphics on Linux (Beta).
Now if you want to truly unleash the power of your chromebook, you can try installing your games and stuff in chroot #2.
here's a screenshot of /opt/VirtualGL/bin/glxspheres and you can see the fps in the xlauncher window. The high fps comes from what seems to an enhancement when you use vglrun in chroot #2.
$ vglrun /opt/VirtualGL/bin/glxspheres
vglrun seems to remove the frame limiter, otherwise glxspheres runs around 60fps.
I've also noticed some games running a lot better with vglrun, but some games just crash... give it a whirl and see what works for you
Here's an in-game shot of Runes of Magic, a d3d9 game from 2009.

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I would like to buy this laptop to run Win-11 with vm with qemu. I would like to know if this chromebook can do it with AMD cpu? I have seen online articles where people have successfully installed win11 on chromebooks with 10th and 11th gen intel cpu but this has 16gb ram which sounds great for vm.