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Comment by andrewmutz | Hacker News Reader

I am writing this comment on Chrome OS Flex and can not say enough good things about Chrome OS Flex. I installed it on my wife's old macbook air (~2013) and it brought new life to a machine that we had written off as useless.

The OS does a great job of exactly two things: web browsing and linux stuff. It won't do more than that, but if that's all you need it is great.

I honestly think you could make some decent cash just by buying 9 year old laptops off the internet, installing chrome OS flex, and selling them as perfectly usable chromebooks.

Any questions about what the OS can do? AMA

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That's odd. My wife is still using a mid-2013 MacBook Air as a daily driver - using MacOS, and it's fine or browsing, Office, e-mail etc etc. In what way was yours 'useless'?

I recently installed the latest OS X Monterey on my early 2013 Macbook Pro with the help of Opencore Legacy Patcher (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/).

What does it do better than simply installing any decent linux distro?

The UX is extremely easy to use. For most users, you're just using web browsers and the window manager for chrome os is designed for just manipulating browser windows.

Unless you install Linux stuff (most users don't) you can't download any software. This means no malware is possible.

It guides you to store everything in the cloud, which allows you to treat your workstations as cattle rather than pets.

Can you install Firefox?

It’s a full fledged Debian

Yes. You can also install vscode etc. Seamlessly integrated into the UI - cannot tell the difference between "native" ChromeOS apps and e.g. Firefox etc.

At least on "normal" Chromebooks anyway you can - I have no direct experience or knowledge of flex.

I tried Visual Studio Code in this release and it doesn't work. Never opens. Tried this old suggestion https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/m146zd/visual_stu... and the only change I see is that visual studio progress and trying to run until it doesn't after a few minutes.

Doesn't seem so extraordinary then. I would treat the last point as a con more than a pro though.

It’s not supposed to be extraordinary. It’s supposed to be simple and cheap and robust and working. Storing data in the cloud is part of that contract — if something happens to your computer (physical damage), you can get up and working very quickly with a new one. As in — you buy a new computer, sign in, and you’re done.

It’s not a set of trade offs that work for everyone, but it works well for many environments. I would have loved these back I the day when I had to maintain Windows clients for people to just turn around and use RDP to connect to a terminal server. Having a light weight client (that was secure) would have made that scenario much nicer.

Does it have an RDP client?

The interaction between xwindows and native chrome is sickkkk!

The difference between ChromeOS and any Linux distro is like night and day. The software updates are automatic, unobtrusive, and almost instantaneous. Multitouch input stack actually works. You can attach and detach displays as you like without anything weird happening. And all the binaries are highly optimized with profile guidance and link-time optimization.

> The software updates are automatic, unobtrusive, and almost instantaneous. Multitouch input stack actually works. You can attach and detach displays as you like without anything weird happening.

I don't know about that multitouch thing and what it provides (is it similar to using 2 fingers to scroll down), I never have any weird thing happening when I attach/detach display and I would describe my software update as automatic, unobtrusive and fast on my fedora laptops.

No idea what "binaries highly optimized with profile guidance and link-time optimization" are though.

> No idea what "binaries highly optimized with profile guidance and link-time optimization" are though.

PGO is a thing where you record runtime information about the program to optimize better later. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13881292/

Be left with your grandmother for 10 years without needing any kind of maintenance or repair.

I put stock Ubuntu on a 2011 Air and I've been having all sorts of problems with it, most notably black screen on re-opening the lid after every 2nd closure. And power management generally.

So I'd be tempted to try the Flex thing just to see how that goes.

Last time I ran chromeOS it was those unofficial builds by a guy called “Lex”, needless to say it was a long time ago.

Back then it wasn’t possible to run anything other than Chrome itself outside of dev mode, but I’ve seen people running/installing VSCode on chromeOS (not in the web browser). Is that feasible?

At the same time as I was seeing this, it appeared that the OS actually has a windowing system now, so you can move windows around and have one on top of the other, is that the case? Any quirks with that?

By default, there is only web browsers and no Linux. Which is nice because by default there can be no malware and it's a good OS for non technical users.

But with one click it installs and makes available Linux. It appears to the user as a debain variant. You can install anything and when you run apps they seamlessly work with the window manager. I've used VScode for software development and it works great. Steam is even available for games, but I haven't tried it.

Window manager is the right balance of powerful and simple. Great at manipulating web browser windows (has virtual desktops if you want them), but works fine interacting with Linux apps as well.

Is it Google in name only or does it send telemetry of my every click to the mother ship? Would be interested in trying it as a VSCode remote development + minimal Linux utilities platform.

I don't know what sort of telemetry exists. It is easy to try out. From my memory you can use the install USB just as a normal boot drive without installing. So you can go try it out and see if you like it before you install it

What makes you think websites can't give you malware for your Chromebook?

That's like the number one way to get it.

What are you referring to? Chrome extensions?

I'm referring to the fact that it's connected to the internet.

The same way all browsers prevent malware? Sandboxing and regular patches to patch holes in the sandbox?

The Chrome team is very responsive to vulnerabilities in my experience, they roll out security patches extremely quickly and chrome autoupdates you to the latest version soon after.

Yes, the same way. That's literally the point I'm making. OPs original comment, "By default, there is only web browsers and no Linux. Which is nice because by default there can be no malware and it's a good OS for non technical users."

As if ChromeOS isn't going to get malware the same way all OSes do.

What's also great is you can install apps through Flatpak and Chrome OS Flex will recognize it and you can pin it to your shelf. There's a fork of VSCode called VSCodium through Flatpak, which doesn't send telemetry to Microsoft. I've also installed Steam, Discord, Libreoffice in Flatpak without any issues.

Microsoft has a whole blog post about VSCode on Chromebooks in their Crostini Linux environment. Which is just... gah:

https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2020/12/03/chromebook-ge...

I mean, the fact that it can be done is neat, but on most entry-level Chromebooks it will be a memory hog, and you might be better served with vim or emacs (one or both of which should be learned to functional competence levels by every programmer), because then you'd have more room for running stuff.

The days of underpowered chromebooks is gone.

They're still pretty brutal.

The BestBuy around the corner from me, for example, is selling an Asus Chromebook with a Celeron N3350/4GB RAM/64GB eMMC and 15.6" 720p screen for $400 CAD.

Is this not underpowered? Sure there are other options, but to most people the appeal was the low cost. For $799, I'd just buy a PC.

my 4 core top of the line intel 10th gen i7 with 16GB of ram i got for 750$ begs to differ

A number of models with 4 GiB RAM are still floating around out there; I consider that underpowered if you are going to be running a browser + heavyweight apps (Visual Studio Code is heavyweight). For Windows 1x, 4 GiB is barely usable; ChromeOS does better but today's memory-hungry apps can take that advantage away.

I’ve seen such models for 200$ apples and oranges

There is absolutely none of my daily workflow where vim or emacs would be a better experience than a full blown modern IDE.

How well does the trackpad work?

Mac trackpads are terrific, and I don’t know if that’s down to the hardware, firmware or software -- I assume a combination of all three.

I am typing this on a mid-2013 Macbook Air and it doesn't feel useless to me - although I maxed out the RAM to 8GB when I ordered it.

My daily driver is a 2013 air on arch. Works 100% perfect for everything I want to do. My work computer is an i7 32 gig beast. I don’t need that for checking gmail.

Is there a terminal emulator included? What shell is installed by default?

ChromeOS has their own terminal app. It installs BASH by default and the linux distro is Debian.

you influenced me to install it on my 2011 macbook pro! Thank you

Wait, so they support 2013 MacBooks, but not Chromebooks released in 2016?

Why do you smell like a paid shill

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