Even if you haven't used it, you've probably heard the name Chrome OS in various reports in recent years: it's a lightweight cloud operating system developed by Google based on the Chrome browser ecosystem, and its market share in 2020 even surpassed macOS to become the second largest operating system. Coupled with the subsequent support for Android and Linux application runtime environments, Chrome OS, which is still relatively unfamiliar to most domestic users, has in fact become a mature desktop operating system.
In February, the Chrome Enterprise team released Chrome OS Flex, a quick-to-flash branch of the Chrome OS system for Windows/macOS/Linux devices.
As a "flashing" service with official Support for Chrome OS, in addition to its lightweight features, its appearance is aimed at the real needs of large-scale deployment in the education market, and the installation process is naturally relatively simple - this project can actually go back to 2020, when Google acquired Neverware, the company that developed CloudReady, and CloudReady is an open source-based Chromium OS The operating system developed from the codebase further streamlines the system components as much as possible on the basis of the already "lightweight" of ChromiumOS, allowing the system to be deployed at scale in the European and American education markets with a large number of old, low-performance PC devices.
After being acquired by Google, CloudReady also became part of the Chrome OS suite, and after integrating more complete Google's first-party services, it can now continue to operate in the form of Chrome OS Flex.
Laptops with Windows, macOS or Linux systems can be installed on chrome OS Flex through official image files. Of course, Chrome OS Flex officially provides a minimum hardware configuration requirement for reference:
Compatible with Intel or AMD x86-64-bit devices
At least 4 GB of RAM
At least 16 GB of internal storage
You can use USB media as a boot disk
The BIOS has full administrator access/operation privileges
Meet the above five requirements, and the device will at least function properly with the Chrome OS Flex system. However, Google Docs also mentioned that before 2010, the device may cause a "poor user experience" due to processor and graphics card performance, and the ability to run Chrome OS Flex does not mean that the device can use all the functions normally, which we will introduce in detail later.
▍ Installation guide
The first thing to be said is that the Chrome OS Flex project is still in the early stages of testing. Therefore, if you install through the official channel, you need to manually fill in the application email to have a chance to qualify for the test of Chrome OS Flex. But now that you've seen it here and are aware of the risks, and want to try out Chrome OS Flex on your device, following this tutorial also saves you a lot of tedious steps and hassle.
First of all, we need to prepare a USB flash drive with a capacity of at least 8GB to burn the Chrome OS Flex startup disk, and we also need a computer that already has a Chrome browser running (Chrome OS is also available) to make a startup disk.
When you're ready, head to the Chrome Online App Store and install the Chromebook Recovery Tool.
After the installation is complete, open the Chrome Plugin Management page and make sure that the Switch of the Chromebook Recovery Tool is turned on. If not, manually click the blue button in the lower right corner of the card to turn it on.
After the above plug-in installation is complete, click open the Chromebook Recovery Tool to start the disk burning process.
Select Google Chrome OS Flex in the brand list options, and the model selection refers to the figure below. After several ok, the boot disk creation process starts automatically. The length of time this process takes varies greatly depending on the speed of the network, but in any case, the whole production process is quite simple.
After the Chrome OS Flex Startup Disk is made, turn off the device and enter the BIOS boot boot boot from the startup disk: Different brands of PCs have different keys, and macs can enter the boot interface by pressing the Option key immediately after pressing the power key at boot time. Then we can launch Chrome OS Flex.
Although Chrome OS Flex offers the option of not installing and only experiencing it on the startup disk, it is important to note that the rate of the installation media itself is important for the smooth installation and the performance of the direct operation. And if you want to use it for a relatively long time, you must use the startup disk to install Chrome OS Flex directly on the device; since the Chrome OS Flex installation option does not provide the option to select the drive letter installation, it also means that the chrome OS Flex installation process will erase all information on the disk, including the original system.
▍ Actual experience
What about the Chrome OS Flex experience, is it worth it for us to completely erase an old device to flash into the installation?
For Google fans or heavy users in the ecosystem, the advantages of Google's first-party system can be said to be the greatest display in Chrome OS Flex: for example, find/mute your phone directly in the control panel, send and receive text messages to sync, and use mobile phone data to access the network, use mobile phone to unlock computers, etc., these have always been the traditional advantages of Chrome OS.
In addition, from the time we install the system and sign in to google account, the PWA apps we used before are automatically synced to the new system. To give users under the original Google ecosystem a sense of convenience of "checking in with a bag", these are the advantages of Chrome OS itself as a "cloud system".
In addition to the above, Google's first-party file transfer tool Nearby Share has also been supported in the current Chrome OS Flex, and more Fast Pair device switching functions will be supported in 2022 and Android 13 to run Android applications through the Chrome OS side of the phone, which will also be added to Chrome OS Flex in the future.
Since the main function updates of Chrome OS essentially rely on cloud synchronization, the various functions/styles and bug fixes updated in the main line Chrome OS can basically guarantee synchronous updates, and it can be expected that there will be the same as Chrome OS in the future, almost unlimited cycles of "swipe version number" updates, which will also become an advantage of Chrome OS Flex.
The most practical value of Chrome OS Flex is that for low-performance devices, switching the system to Chrome OS Flex can further improve the running efficiency of the Chrome browser itself and save more storage space. If your daily work can already be done using the Chrome ecosystem and Google system services, as well as various online tools, Chrome OS Flex is certainly a worthwhile "refurbishment" for old devices.
However, the above is almost all the advantages of Chrome OS Flex: for people who do not need / do not often use Google services, Chrome OS Flex's various "convenient features" are likely to become inconvenient to use, not only in the installation process of Chrome OS Flex need to log in to Google account, lock screen password will be automatically set to correspond to the Password of Google Account... These details also further increase the threshold for domestic users to use Chrome OS Flex.
Speaking of thresholds, another slightly embarrassing aspect of Chrome OS Flex is that it does not support the operation of Android apps, which limits the possibility of device expansion to a certain extent; as for the Linux operating environment, it is more important to decide whether it can be turned on normally depending on the device hardware. On this PC I have, the Linux version of the app that usually offers a deb installation package can be installed and run directly.
By selecting "Linux Development Environment" in the Developer Options, you can manually allocate information such as installation space and permission settings for the Linux runtime environment. Linux will even be more suitable for use than the Chrome OS native system on the desktop side, which can be adjusted according to your own needs and device specifications.
If you're a Linux veteran and you're good enough to do it, you can even run a development tool like VS Code/Android Studio in the Linux development environment for Chrome OS Flex.
In addition, Chrome OS's clichéd Chinese input method is very unfriendly to Chinese users, and the built-in Chinese input method customization is quite low, and it is not even up to the standard of 2022, and Chrome OS support for third-party input methods is already an old problem. Although you can choose to install Sogou Input Method with the help of the Linux runtime environment, it is still not available in the Chrome OS native environment.
▍ Alternatives
From the above advantages/disadvantages, it can be seen that unlike Linux or some Android third-party ROM non-profit projects that open up swipe permissions for third-party devices, Google is aware of the market value of this and actively promotes the Chrome OS Flex project to promote Google services. And due to the target education market/start-up learning cost constraints, the various advantages and disadvantages of Chrome OS Flex are quite obvious, and there is still not much room for compromise like Chrome OS.
Fortunately, this does not mean that there is only one option for you to experience Chrome OS: if you really have a device with relatively sufficient performance, or just want to experience the Chrome OS system, and you can only install it on the devices you use the most every day, there are many better options than Chrome OS. These alternatives are more flexible or even more advantageous in areas such as Android app support.
In a previous discussion in the group, we also highlighted two other Chrome OS installation alternatives: direct installation of the full Chrome OS system with the Brunch framework and FydeOS based on ChromiumOS.
If you use the Brunch framework to install Chrome OS, we need to download the image file in the GitHub home page, and make a startup disk according to the corresponding hardware specifications, the installation process is more complicated than Chrome OS Flex, the specific installation tutorial can refer to this article.
Compared with Chrome OS Flex, the advantage of brunch solution is that it retains the Android running environment, and it can also manually divide the disk partition, which is convenient for us to install Chrome OS while retaining the original system to taste early.
Another FydeOS device support is more complete, the main "localization" improvement is that FydeOS is based on ChromiumOS, so it completely strips away the almost ubiquitous Google services in Chrome OS, while the Android/Linux application runtime environment that many people value more is preserved.
FydeOS officially provides adaptation support for multiple devices such as Surface and Honor tablets, and even replaces the local cloud synchronization system of Google services. However, these are commercial services and need to be used for a fee. However, the version for virtual machines and regular PC installations is free.
Strictly speaking, FydeOS is no longer a derivative of Chrome OS, we can also install FydeOS to a specific disk partition, and due to the stripping of Google services, the threshold for use in the domestic network environment is relatively low. FydeOS itself also operates an application store suitable for the domestic ecology, which is more suitable for domestic users.
▍ Summary
Chrome OS Flex is a fairly distinctive feature of Google's strategy: users familiar with Google's ecology can "move in", and the easy-to-use installation experience is also suitable for large-scale deployment needs. But there are many trade-offs for this, but it is not very suitable for players who want to try Chrome OS, and users who want to use Chrome OS to maximize the residual heat of old devices.
If the performance of the device you use to install Chrome OS Flex is sufficient, you can get a more complete Chrome OS Flex experience in the macOS / Windows environment, and there will be no problems in keyboard shortcuts, driver perfection, etc. But if your expectations for Chrome OS are mainly focused on Android app support, old device reuse, etc., I believe you can also weigh better solutions after reading this article.
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Author: Dawn Frontline Alan
Editor-in-Charge: Clyde