Setting Up Syncthing for Linux on ChromeOS

Everythings always gotta be a whole fucking ordeal with chromebooks ain't it? Just let me have linux you cowards! You can't even use linux to game bc usb devices connected to a chromebook cant be used in linux bc linux is run as a container with barely no controls. That being said, network connections is one of the few things Google deigned to give us lowly few some control over, which means we can use Syncthing.

Part 1: Setting Up Syncthing

Enable Port Forwarding

settings > advanced > linux development environment > port forwarding > add

The default repo for Syncthing is for an old version and will give an error when trying to connect from newer versions[1] so you need to use an alternate source to download an up to date version. To do this, open a terminal and run the following commands:

                    Add the release PGP keys
                    sudo curl -s -o /usr/share/keyrings/syncthing-archive-keyring.gpg https://syncthing.net/release-key.gpg
                    Add the "stable" channel to your APT sources
                    echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/syncthing-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.syncthing.net/ syncthing stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/syncthing.list
                    Update and install Syncthing
                    sudo apt update
                    sudo apt install syncthing
                

[2] Follow the instructions in the Syncthing docs[3] to set up Syncthing on all relevant devices. If you are using Syncthing for devices on the same network it would behoove you to have Syncthing try to connect directly to the ip address of the device before using a relay[4][5]

Part 2: Running Syncthing

To start syncthing, simply run

syncthing

in the terminal