Hey everyone. Has anyone here ever tried installing ChromeOS on their device? I’m traditionally a Windows man myself, and I find it the best option for my purposes, but recently I came to wonder what ChromeOS Flex would be like on this tiny fella. As a weird hybrid of Android and Linux it looks a very promising OS for everyday use on low-end devices. Its Android origin makes me think it must be a better option for touch-screen devices, and especially those with small screen (don’t know for sure, though, just a wild guess), while the Linux functionality will cover for all the other needs of the regular user (mine are nothing much more than an office suite and a couple of dictionaries and linguistic tools and utilities). I’m not much of a Linux user myself, and my only experience of working with it is installing PopOS on my wife’s ancient battered laptop, which indeed made it work faster, but it’s still of not much use except playing YouTube or some shows while doing something in the kitchen. No matter the software, if the hardware is old and tired, nothing will save it.
I read somewhere that people managed to install Ubuntu and Mint on the devices, but what interests me most is the notorious driver issue. Seems the manufacturer only provides drivers for Windows.
Has anybody tried it? It so, could you please share your experience? Many thanks in advance.
Just booting from the USB, and not actually installing, the experience was okay. The problem was that the audio system and the touch screen require special drivers that aren't present in ChromeOS and there is no way to add drivers in ChromeOS. The mouse buttons also didn't work, but I found an accesibility feature that allows you to click if you hover over something for a second, but the feature is definitely more annoying than the mouse buttons. It gets annoying especially when you are trying to type something, and while your fingers are moving toward the keys, it clicks on something and messes you up. The headphone jack doesn't work either. I didn't get a chance to try anything bluetooth. Everything else seemed to work, although I didn't do a thorough test. I definitely wouldn't want to use ChromeOS on daily, and that's coming from someone who uses it on an old PC as my daily driver. Another note: although the ChromeOS that ships with "official" Chromebooks comes with support for android apps, that is not availible in ChromeOS Flex, which is the operating system that runs on standard PC hardware. The only way to install any software in Flex is to install browser plugins, or, if you have a newer CPU, you can install Linux programs.
I'll be honest, I haven't even considered ChromeOS. There are a lot of possible Linux distros. I didn't even think of Android.
I'm also curious if there will be others who have thought about it, or even tried it. 🤔