In this month’s epsiode of “Wait you use a Chromebook?”, I get Parsec running on ChromeOS.
If you’re hyper mobile like me, pretty much all your “work” happens on the go. That being said, I do have a workstation collecting dust in my apartment that I remote into occasionally. For remote desktop access, Parsec is just about the best option available.
So let’s rig up the Linux version of Parsec on our Chromebook. Officially speaking, Parsec doesn’t support it. So it’s understandable that the Debian pacakge fails to install out of the box unless we do some package magic. So let’s dive right in.
Enable The Linux Development Environment
First off, you need to enable the Linux (Beta) development environment on your Chromebook. This can be done by going into your Chromebook’s settings, searching for “Linux (Beta),” and then following the prompts to enable it. This will install a Terminal app in your Chromebook’s app drawer. Go ahead and open it.
Install Dependencies
With the Terminal app open, we’ll first install the necessary dependencies for Parsec by running:
sudo apt install libjpeg62-turbo libavcodec59
If you get errors about the packages not being available, you might have to try libavcodec58 or libavcodec57. libjpeg62-turbo has been in the Debian repos since 2017, so there shouldn’t be any problems there. Leave a comment if you run into anything else.
Create The Symbolic Link
Parsec requires libjpeg.so.8, but only libjpeg.so.62 is available in the default repositories. To resolve this, create a symbolic link to trick Parsec into using the newer version we installed earlier:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so.62 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so.8
It’s technically not supported, but I haven’t had any issues.
Download and Install Parsec
Next, download the Parsec .deb package off Parsec’s website:
wget https://builds.parsec.app/package/parsec-linux.deb
And install it using dpkg, forcing the installation despite any dependency issues:
sudo dpkg --force-all -i parsec-linux.deb
After it completes the Parsec app should show up in the app drawer under “Linux Apps”. Make sure you sign in and test it before you leave home!