TL:DR— Sublime Text is a proprietary text and code editor which is very popular among developers due to a simple, fast and distraction free interface, an ability to open all the files in a folder, support for third party plugins through a package control system, extensive language syntax highlighting, and a clickable minimap view of an entire file. Sublime Text runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Sublime Text is one of the best text editors around. Its licence keys can be shared across platforms. If you use lots of different operating systems it is beneficial to have the same editor.
Modern Chromebooks have Linux so it just works, right?
Not quite! Version 4 continues to provide support for Linux, and is downloadable from the makers website, Sublime HQ. Modern Chromebooks have a Linux subsystem, so it is possible to install Sublime text. It is a very manual process though.
Just take me to the link
Installation on a Chromebook
Launch a terminal on your Chromebook, and check your system is supported. Type uname -m and you are looking for x86_64. Ok, so now download the x86_64 tarball from the Sublime website. Once downloaded in Chrome OS the file is available to Linux. You just have to find it! It is hidden away in /mnt/chromeos/MyFiles/Downloads/. Once you know that, it is straightforward to extract it and move it to a suitable location, and set up the command line.
$ ls /mnt/chromeos/MyFiles/Downloads/sublime_text_build_4107_x64.tar.xz
/mnt/chromeos/MyFiles/Downloads/sublime_text_build_4107_x64.tar.xz
$ tar xvf /mnt/chromeos/MyFiles/Downloads/sublime_text_build_4107_x64.tar.xz
Once extracted, move the application to your desired location. Create two symbolic links, one for the command line subl and the other for the desktop launcher information file.
$ sudo mv sublime_text/ /opt/
$ sudo ln -s /opt/sublime_text/sublime_text /usr/local/bin/subl
$ sudo ln -s /opt/sublime_text/sublime_text.desktop /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop
Main editing screen
Sublime is now available from the Chrome OS launcher
Changing the launcher icon
I used sublime to edit its own configuration file for the chrome os desktop, to apply an icon I found online to make it look nicer than the Linux icon that it displayed by default.
$ /opt/sublime_text/sublime_text.desktop
Edit the line starting with Icon= to contain the path to the desired icon file.
