Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

Well this link is to a fluffy marketing piece that tells you exactly zero about what the product is, why I should care, or how it's different from ChromeOS. Must be nice to get paid to write lots of words without actually saying anything.

Some links that may be more helpful for the HN audience:

How to install it without handing over your personal info to a salescritter: https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11552529

Supported devices: https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094 (No information on whether it will refuse to install on other devices or whether it's more of a "it could work, but you'll be on your own" situation. Interestingly, there are Apple products listed.)

Differences between ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex: https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11542901

Edit: One important difference that pretty much wipes out what a lot of us would be interested in: "Google Play and Android apps: Chrome OS Flex does not support Android apps or Google Play."

>One important difference that pretty much wipes out what a lot of us would be interested in: "Google Play and Android apps: Chrome OS Flex does not support Android apps or Google Play."

Looking at the OS I think Flex isn't targeted at consumers but at enterprise who want an idiot proof Google docs/chrome workspace for employees.

From the page about the differences:

> While many non-certified devices might work, Google guarantees only those on the list.

> One important difference that pretty much wipes out what a lot of us would be interested in: "Google Play and Android apps: Chrome OS Flex does not support Android apps or Google Play."

If they added that, it would kill Chrome OS’s main benefit: security.

Why would it kill security? Chrome OS already supports Play and Android apps: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7021273?hl=en

Many of ChromeOS's security guarantees evaporate as soon as you install or enable the android subsystem.

I beg to differ on this. Went to a presentation by the ChromeOS engineers who developed the Android support, at LinuxCon 2016(?) in Berlin. Everything shown there pointed to an explicit distrust of Android, their security posture was essentially 'sandbox the hell out of it'.

The Android sandbox on ChromeOS was pretty weak until recently, sharing a kernel with significant attack surface with the underlying chromeos.

Android 11 on ChromeOS is being deployed as a lightweight VM, called ARCVM: https://chromeunboxed.com/how-to-check-your-chromebook-new-a... It’s similar to how the Linux VMs on chromeos work.

Better link: https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/making-android-more-secure-wit...

I wonder if this is related to Flex’s “supported” devices not having verified boot, which is via a chip provided by Google. Some detail at https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec/+/c....

I read it as a point-of-sale / service OS for business-level security. I don't think its audience is home consumer.

(edit: as others have stated)

Who in their right mind would buy Macs for their enterprise and then load Chrome OS on it? The fact that they even mention Macs makes me think this is for more than just enterprise usage. Or... Google doesn't even know who this is for or why they are doing it.

If you have an existing mac fleet but are interested in switching to less expensive hardware updating existing systems to this could greatly reduce the conversion costs without needing to support multiple OSes for an extended period of time.

I’m pretty sure all the Apple devices listed support Bootcamp. So it wouldn’t be all that difficult to load another OS on it.

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