Creating a Proxmox or QEMU ChromeOS Flex VM
kevindavid.org
kevindavid.org
ChromeOS Flex doesn't get enough credit. While I recently migrated from Windows to Linux on my production machine, ChromeOS Flex is my OS of choice for a simple Push Here Dummy (PHD) machine. There is zero maintenance from an OS standpoint and the ChromeOS Flex Certified models list allows me to pick from a variety of quality hardware, not just some cheap Chromebook. I have more than one of these lying around the house and I often take one on personal trips as well.
That said... if Google wants to fold ChromeOS into Android, I think they'll have to make Android fully supported on x86 as a first-class platform (because most Chromebooks are x86). And if they do that, they should have little problem making a... Android Flex or whatever you'd call it that boots on normal PC hardware just like ChromeOS Flex does today and fills the same role.
In any case, except for shared objects written with the NDK, the actual CPU hardly matters, even across ARM there is enough variation.
If similar to ChromeOS it is directly updated by Google then it will be a huge win for all computer users. No pain from OEM. I mean some Gemini crap from Google but that is tolerable.
The second problem is that ChromeOS Flex has a limited support period. It's no doubt longer than Android, but it's still artificially limiting the life of older hardware that has potentially still many more years of service left. Like my mum's Optiplex 9020 which reaches end of support in 2026 - whereas I believe it's got at least 5 years, if not more, especially considering that I could upgrade the RAM/CPU/disk if required.
The third issue is that it's Google. There's no telling when they'll pull the plug on this.
The "PHD" solution I ended up going for was Aurora (an immutable distro based on Fedora Atomic). Aurora uses KDE, which was simple and familiar enough for my mum to use with almost no training, and its got atomic automatic updates with the last two images also available in the boot menu, in the rare event something goes wrong. It's practically zero-maintenance like ChromeOS, with none of the drawbacks.
Oh and in case Aurora ever decides to fold, it's easy enough to rebase to another Fedora Atomic variant with just a single command, without affecting your data.
That is exactly the reason to use ChromeOS/flex.
The UI is well designed to use cloud as storage space. i.e no worries when anything folds including hardware failure.
I have not used Aurora but does it automatically do FDE? Does the user need to install chrome or Firefox? I have seen people saving passwords locally and not syncing. One fine day Xorg (or wayland gives up). Then one needs to go to users place and fix it. I did install flex on my parents machine in the other side of globe. It still works updates seamless.
I recommended ChromeOS (despite the pain of needed ublock origin ) mainly because users need to remember only one password. i.e Google 's password.
While I am a daily driver of Linux/Xubuntu, the UI from kde/gnome etc is not that friendly as ChromeOS (which mimics Android).
Not detecting printer is specific situation. This could also happen with many Linux distros.
Of course it is all IMHO.
I got my folks to switch to Firefox decades ago (back in the IE 6 era), so they're comfortable with it and never had any issues with its password sync.
Wayland hasn't been a problem either. My folks don't use any fancy GPUs like nVidia (which seem to be the common cause of Linux display issues). And as I said, in case something does break, they can easily boot the previous to images right from the boot menu, no need to even press any secret keys or do a restore. My folks are also on the other side of the globe, so stability and support were my main considerations, and I liked the idea of being able to easily rollback to a previous update.
I agree with Gnome not being friendly, but don't include KDE with that - it uses the same, old-school desktop metaphor that old Windows versions used - which my folks were familiar with. Of course, this is a subjective thing, luckily my folks had no issues finding their way around. But it's not like they do any complicated computing stuff.
Yes the printer is a specific situation, but I mentioned it because I was surprised ChromeOS didn't detect it when Aurora had no issues. You'd think that ChromeOS, being based on Linux, would work fine as well... but clearly they're not alike.
I mean, its interesting that you can, but I’m working the opposite way, I run Proxmox so that I can run ChromeOS as my main working OS.