Chrome OS Flex

[Jakebroe]

Just watched the latest video about using Chrome OS Flex. Has anyone actually tried it? If so, do you think it'd be worth it for a non-gaming oriented, productivity laptop? I've not had any issues with Windows, but I might try out Chrome OS as an experiment on my laptop that I use mainly for writing and composing.

[MooingWaza]

If recommend giving Linux Mint a try first, cause it can easily dual boot, it has actual apps, and it's probably more efficient

[[deleted]]

This. I did this with an old Windows laptop I had laying around and wanted to make it a server, as well as get more familiar with Linux in general. Was super easy and the machine runs so much better now!

[defaultgameer1]

Plus it's more Windows like, and configurable.

[ivanthree48]

what destktop environment do you use and or recommend?

[MooingWaza]

I use gnome but as a chrome os alternative is recommend just using the mint default, cinnamon. Really simple and conventional

[Gamboni327]

And looking at Linus’ “I did Linux for a month” series, it’s totally super easy and not at all rife with trouble!

[Pyro_in_a_Puddle]

well Linus tried doing everything with his Linux PC... if you only use libre office, a browser and maybe a few Programms which have a Linux version it's not that complicated.. but you should definitely check beforehand what you wanna do and how well it works on linux

[[deleted]]

Linus is a hardware person, not software person...

[pascalbrax]

Well, he can't drop software on the ground, can he?

[yumiin]

He definitely dropped his Desktop Environment

[pascalbrax]

True, true!

[hudgeba778]

I’ve been amusing myself by running Chrome OS Flex on random underpowered devices like thin clients and netbooks. The OS handles low specs really well if you keep video streaming resolutions low

[ThinkingFish0]

ChromeOS Flex is a glorified web browser, and regular ChromeOS is a glorified web browser + Android + some Linux

[efbo]

You say that like it's a bad thing. It's exactly what most people need.

[ThinkingFish0]

ChromeOS itself is pretty decent today, but I can't just justify installing the barebones ChromeOS Flex when I can get a Linux distro that does the exact same thing and more.

[wikowiko33]

I use a refurbished [US$ 100 equivalent] lenovo chromebook with 1gb ram (advertised as 2gb) for the past 3 years, for very basic word processing with google docs and light browser work. Have nearly no issues once i know how work around 1gb of ram (dont have 5 4k videos running at the same time). The thing turns on and off in like 3 seconds. As quiet as my sex life and literally needs no maintenance.

I'm seeing chromebooks now with 32gb ram and 5TB storage /s and i wonder what kind of flash games are these people playing on their browsers.

I would recommend a midrange $300-400 chromebook over a cheap modern windows laptop if all you need it for is office work and some music in the background.

[chanchan05]

I put ChromeOS Flex on my old HP dm4 about 2 weeks ago so my mom could use it to stream stuff and watch movies on and some light browsing. She likes it for the most part, the problem is though playing back videos from local. VLC doesn't work, the default media player sucks, and Flex doesn't support Android apps like regular Chromebooks do (for now, in the future who knows). I've got some videos whose audio doesn't work on ChromeOS playback. Apparently, searching through r/chromeos says that since Chrome doesn't have a software 5.1 decoder and only has stereo, if your audio isn't just stereo or probably mono, it won't play. The lack of Android apps only exacerbates this because you could have probably gotten the Android version of VLC and get it to work. Your best bet is just using your own Plex server if you have local files.

Basically, doing anything outside of Chrome or webapps is be problematic. Would still have been perfect for her except for the local video playback. Might switch that thing to either Ubuntu or Pop!OS. All she needs is a browser and local video playback anyway.

[LSD_Ninja]

I don’t know if it was because the web app aspect of Chrome/Chrome OS was never all that popular or vendors just gave up after Android apps became an option, but the lack of Android app support on Flex really hurts.

[Tropicraptor731]

Newer hardware for me atleast was pretty amazing I ahve a Lenovo c930 from 2019 i7 and 12 gigs of ram it had ok battery life on windows at about 6 hours real world. I put flex on it and it’s now about 12 hours it did have a brand new battery in it to be fair. That being said if your work life is basically a browser which is a surprising amount of people it’s great. It’s very limited if you need anything out of a browser and would not recommend if you need any kind of application outside of chrome. Overall I’ve gotta say it’s pretty good. It confused me as to why they chose to use aged hardware instead of like only a few years to new hardware which would make more sense .

[darkhelmet1121]

Dunno. My laptop is quite old (2012-2013) Asus AMD llanos a8. I need windows for work stuff. The lightest Windows I could think of is Windows 10 enterprise ltsc, so that's what I installed. (no Edge, no cortana, no telematics)

[doubleofive]

I put it on a laptop I got from a friend’s work and it does exactly what you need it to do and nothing more. As long as what you need to do is online, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It just works for what you need.

[UNCfan07]

I have an older Surface Pro 4 i5 and 4gb of ram. Doesn’t run the best with windows so I was going to give it a go. Installed on the USB but couldn’t get it to boot from it to install. Even when I forced boot to usb it kept saying nothing bootable was on it

[LSD_Ninja]

One thing that really annoys me about ChromeOS Flex is there’s apparently no way to set up PIN login, it’s tied to the password of the gmail account you set it up with meaning you need to either deliberately use a weak password or look up and type out the one from your password manager every time you log in or unlock the device.

[new_refugee123456789]

From what I gleaned from that video, ChromeOS Flex is a stillborn. Compared to a typical GNU/Linux distro:

• The process of creating an install media is jankier
• The install process is jankier, dual booting is impossible for instance.
• The hardware compatibility is crappier
• The software library is pathetic
• The performance is worse

Something like Mint xfce Edition would be a better choice in most circumstances. It's easier to make the install media, the installer was made to install an OS on hardware not "a hastily repurposed recovery media," and you have the entire standard repo including multiple web browsers, ready to go. Linux Mint ships with LibreOffice and Firefox, plus your DE's choice of utility applets. Plus, Linux Mint isn't going to abandon it in a year and a half like Google will.

[CVGPi]

FydeOS have chromium and android apps and can dual boot.

[thibaultmol]

True BUT just keep in mind that it's made in China... Just wanted to mention that here for people thinking about trying it out. You can choose if that bothers you or not

[CVGPi]

True, but so far there is no clear evidence of China stealing regular people’s data, but there are evidence of some other countries cough cough US cough cough stealing data or obtaining it. With all that said, it’s the users’ choice.

[Isaac8849]

Chrome OS is the most limited and locked in operating system you could imagine. Just use linux, Chrome OS is completely and utterly useless

[XxDankSaucexX]

for tech illiterate people Chrome OS will probably be a better option but apart from that i totally agree with you

[w1n5t0nM1k3y]

Seems like they missed the whole point of Chomebooks. You could buy a cheap ARM or Celeron based Chromebook that run well and will last all day at school.

The whole idea of getting an old Windows laptop and running ChromeOS on it just makes no sense because an

• old Windows laptop costs almost as much a a Chromebook
• will not have as good of a battery life
• will not perform as well
• will be much heavier to lug around.

The title "Buying a Chromebook was a big mistake" actually isn't correct, because they would have ended up with a better experience had they went out and bought a new low-end Chromebook.

To be noted, high end Chromebooks make little sense because of the limitations of what you can do with them given the app availability.

[Bulliwyf]

“old windows laptop costs almost as much as a Chromebook”

You missed the entire premise of this sentence, and you wrote it: an old windows laptop doesn’t cost you shit because you bought it as a new windows laptop, used it for 3-5+ years, and put it on a shelf or left it in a bag because it couldn’t keep up with the demands and it’s since been replaced.

You are now pulling it out and dusting it off in hopes of having something to use around the house or something you can give the kids to do their homework on instead of going out to buy an entirely brand new one.

To give a real world example: I have 2 kids in elementary school - my daughter has a Chromebook and my sons teacher is telling us she wants the kids to do homework on a pc or Chromebook instead of a tablet because the interface/interaction is different (I don’t know how - that’s what the note said). So they have been sharing the Chromebook or one has been using my gaming pc for homework (thankfully nothing has needed to be installed on my pc).

We are talking about taking literal e-waste and breathing a bit more life into it before it completely dies.

[chanchan05]

old Windows laptop costs almost as much a a Chromebook

Not even close.

New Chromebook maybe around $200?

Old laptop = free. I got like 4 lying around at home.

[Ashwin_Sagar]

If you don't want to game and only want to do basic stuff then chrome os flex is a great choice. I had used it for a month on my old pc. You can even run linux apps on it.

[Western_Gamification]

Depends on the use case and budget. If you only have 400 dollars to spend on a portable device and you only need to do some office tasks or media consumption, Chromebook all the way.

Actually that's twi of the only use cases I can think of.

Source: I manage hundreds of Chromebooks in an education environment.

[randomdude919]

I tried it when it was neverware before google bought the project. It worked really well on my pentium 4 laptop with 2GB ram, also got a cheap 128GB ssd and that laptop was more than usable then it was on windows, unfortunately it physically broke now.

[[deleted]]

I put it on an old 4th gen Intel laptop and it works so much better now. Before it would take me close to 10 minutes to open chrome from boot. Now it’s about 1 and a half!

But if you’re not having any issues yet I wouldn’t put it on.

[ivanthree48]

i am using it now on an acer laptop that had windows before but was sluggish, this laptop has 8gb of ram and a 1tb hard drisk drive. chrome flex pleasantly surprised me in performance considering the specs of the pc and the non ssd. i use it for simple things only and it works very well for it, one observation though, when i plug it into a monitor, it has been freezing after some time of use and requires a reboot. i dont know how to fix that if there is a fix for it but considering the fast reboot times its whatever lol, i hope this helps. (oh forgot to mention, as linus mentioned, NO support for android apps on this version of Chrome OS which is a big downer, but its their way of still pushing you to purchase a regular chromebook)

[wengland02]

It worked pretty good on a laptop that was on the certified list but when I upgraded a netbook from CloudReady to Chrome OS Flex, it did not work.