Installing Minecraft on Lenovo Chromebook Duet

ARM struggle with an Happy End

Last update: 30th November 2020

I am not a great player of Minecraft but I have a responsibility! A couple of months ago, I bought myself a little beautiful device, Lenovo Chromebook Duet. And then I made “a mistake”: I persuaded my colleague that this would be a great device for her little son ca 9 years old. Of course, I thought, he could play tons of games there! After all, according to her, he played mainly games in a web-browser and she wanted a device he could use for programming in Scratch and some light future school work. I thought and I still think that Chromebook Duet is an ideal device for that considering its price and included keyboard! Yet, then came Minecraft…

When I read her e-mail about his discovery of this game, I knew it would not be easy. Chromebook Duet supports Google Play Store and there is even an education version of Minecraft there but some time ago, Microsoft decided that a standard Minecraft Pocket Edition (PE) will simply not be available on Chromebooks. No idea why.

So I started to look for a solution in the waters of Reddit. And there are so many! I tried:

• Sideloading Android Minecraft PE. I made an apk copy of my bought Minecraft PE and tried to sideload it into the Chromebook through Linux adb. After an hour, I got the loading screen and that was all.
• I knew there was a Java edition of Minecraft and that should work on…