Can ChromeOS Flex Revive Your Old Laptop?

ChromeOS Flex is a free operating system that can breathe new life into old PCs - but what should you know before trying it out?

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[zenith]

To follow-up the video: if you have a laptop with 1-2GB of RAM there are super slimline Linux variants that will work where Chrome OS Flex doesn't. I'm currently playing around with a Puppy Linux variant that seems to be working well on an old 1GB Atom netbook.

[_GhostMiner]

*Don't throw it away. Make it even more useless than it already is.* 😂

[DaimyoD]

As other people have mentioned in the comments, there was already an LTT video on this premise, and IIRC, their (your) testing suggested that ChromeOS Flex didn't really help in the majority of cases, sometimes even making things worse, and your best chances of improved performance were to install a lightweight distribution of Linux. I don't really get the point of this Techquickie. I was expecting a DIY Perks-style guide on how to scavenge your old laptop for parts and upcycle them into new projects.

[PwnyPony]

I thought the takeaway from the last time LTT talked about Chrome OS Flex was to install a lightweight Linux distro like AntiX instead.

Since Chrome OS ended up preforming worse in most cases except boot time.

[irwainnornossa]

I've put Mint on my old ntb. Works absolutely great. I'd never put there something as limiting and limited as basically phone OS.

[electricnezumi]

I love how Riley mentions Kali as something you would just randomly decide to install on an old pc. Clearly whoever wrote this has no idea what Kali is used for (Kali is not meant to be a daily driver, it's pretty much exclusively for pentesting and such).

[WhisThDctr]

My spouse wanted me to recycle our ~10-year-old Sony Vaio laptop earlier this week. Instead, I cloned the drive to a SATA SSD and it's now running better and faster than when it was brand new!

[abdusalamar]

You're better off throwing it away than installing a giant privacy invading spyware disguised as an OS.

[gunswinger]

Wouldn't a lightweight linux distro work better than installing a mostly web based OS?

[irvalfirestar]

We used old laptops for temporary server setups, mostly for testing out system we wanted to deploy at home. Seeing that most of the things we wanted to try are usually super light, old laptops are perfect for testing them. Had Home Assistant and Plex running off of an old Lenovo once before we built a proper home server for it.

[belthesheep]

Throw in an SSD to make it run more nicely. Download mouse without borders. You now have a "second monitor" for lightweight apps that won't slow down your main pc.

[sogerc]

It's easier to get an SSD, they are dirt cheap these days, and then install a Debian+XFCE on the computer. I just did it on a 14 years old laptop, runs youtube on 720p.

[devrandvar]

A Linux distro is usually going to better then Chrome OS in most cases its performance is not really that much better then windows on old hardware. I have revived several laptops using a Linux distro over the years. I am not a Linux expert by any means, but there are plenty of decent tutorials online on how to install most distros, so it is not hard as long as you are able to follow instructions. I have had a issue with a old laptop not working with most distos for some reason, Ubuntu, Debian, and several others that I tried would not install at all or would not run correctly once installed, but Fedora worked perfectly. I never understood the issue there, but most of the time any of the distros will install on just about anything and usually run better then windows on old hardware.

[connorsullivan]

Its hard to even see this as an operating system, but rather a slightly more complex web browser application running on top of a kernel

[samius]

I wonder how it would affect Youtube video streaming - a big issue I've seen in older hardware is they can't quite keep up with Youtube's decompression requirements on 720/1080 60fps videos - which are becoming more popular. It can force you to upgrade an otherwise adequate Email/Word/Youtube-watching machine

[FireFoxDestroyer]

Imagine if we get to the point where the things in the actual operating system are a USB service, an Internet connection prompt, an Internet connection service, and an application that is launched on startup that is just a portal to a cloud server. I'll call it: "TrueCloudOS."
Just a portal to a cloud server with an operating system.

[csumme]

Switched today by the way. Thanks for the video. It breathed new life back into my HP Elitebook 820 G3.

[WyvernDotRed]

For this exact situation, I am using Clear Linux set up with Dash to Dock and their browser of choice pre-installed.
As simple to use to them, but a complete FlatPak distro (like SteamOS), that fully auto-updates without breaking.
As discovered in the LTT video about Chrome OS Flex, any Linux distro would be better and if this works at all, it is one of the more idiot-proof options.

[robspiess]

I loved the Clippit animations during the end credits!

[stefanos]

ChromeOS is essentially a bootloader for a browser with extra steps in telemetry.