Chrome OS Flex

Recently Google released a new variant of Chrome-OS called “Chrome OS Flex” which can run on generic hardware. This is great for relatively easily giving a new lease of life to old laptops and allowing people to continue to capitalise on existing hardware.

I have tried this operating system on both an old MacBook and a Thinkpad 11e. The MacBook is a bit janky on video which can be expected since the unit is around 14 years old.

The process of getting Chrome OS Flex onto a computer is relatively simple or it would be relatively easily to get a tech-savvy friend to work through it.

In essence you end up with a USB stick installer which, once started on the target computer, allows for both trying it out without installing or to proceed to install the Chrome OS Flex operating system onto the device.

I usually tend to lean toward Firefox for browsing, but this is nonetheless quite cool. It is a great way to re-use hardware.