ChromeOS Flex – Tweakers tested

If you’re a laptop editor at Tweakers, no one thinks it’s weird that you have a pile of unused laptops somewhere in the house. However, it turns out I’m not the only one. Research by Motivaction for the Open Foundation showed that there are million laptops Lying is not used in the closet. That’s an average of one in eight families, and I can imagine that number is higher among coaches.

It can be guessed why these laptops are not used; They have been replaced by newer and faster computers. But why do we still keep these laptops? sentimental value? Were there any important files on it? Or is it strange to get rid of working devices?

Photo: Getty Images / Zoran Milich

Whatever the reason, it is a shame not to use these laptops. However, if you want to reuse it, you will face the same problem in many cases. The operating system it is on is outdated, missing a lot of updates, and slow. ChromeOS Flex could be the solution to this problem. In this article, I will install ChromeOS Flex on some laptops to see what it is, how it works and if it is a good idea to breathe new life into your old laptop.

ChromeOS Flex

ChromeOS Flex is an operating system from Google. It is very similar to regular ChromeOS, which works exclusively on Chromebooks and Chromeboxes. It is a further development of Cloudready, which was an operating system from Neverware which in turn was based on ChromiumOS. ChromiumOS is an open source project which is also the basis of ChromeOS and which Google is making its own modifications to access ChromeOS.

The main difference between ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex is that the former is specifically designed for a specific Chromebook. Thus, your Chromebook is equipped with the correct drivers, updates are guaranteed for a certain period and Google determines which functions it has. Chromebooks also come with a file safety chip From Google itself, which regular laptops don’t have. ChromeOS images cannot be installed on other systems.

You can install ChromeOS Flex yourself on non-Chromebook devices. Google has published a list of Officially supported laptops. This list contains only a small portion of the laptops that have been launched in the market in recent years, moreover, the majority of the list consists of business models; Lenovo ThinkPads, HP Elitebooks, and Dell Latitude. So there’s a good chance your laptop won’t be among them. But don’t worry, if your laptop doesn’t have official support, there’s a good chance ChromeOS Flex will still work. The System requirements They are as follows:

Most laptops and desktop computers will meet the first four requirements. Since the Core 2 Duo generation, all processors from Intel can handle 64-bit instructions, and this has been the case at AMD since the Athlon 64 on desktop and Turion 64 for laptops. You also have 4GB of memory and 16GB of storage available at any given time.

The only thing that could throw a wrench into the works is the somewhat vague requirement for a “CPU and CPU from 2010 or later”. ChromeOS Flex doesn’t seem to have driver support for pre-2010 hardware. It’s Intel’s Sandy Bridge generation, so 2nd generation Core processors should be fine. On AMD this generation comes with apus, so processors that have an A or E prefix.

I was not able to check if ChromeOS Flex works on AMD laptops. I still have one somewhere Samsung R505 With AMD Athlon RM-72 processor and crash during installation. This laptop appeared on the market in 2009, and this is at least a confirmation that ChromeOS on this laptop before 2010 will not work. I managed to find a laptop with Sandy Bridge on which the operating system could be installed without any problems. So it is not guaranteed that it will succeed if you meet the above requirements, but the chances are high.