This is great! Only concern I have is that it seems Google is moving to Android Desktop OS. So would ChromeOS be supported in the future? What about the hardware support in this case?
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$3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
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Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#22A Google partner is selling 3000 USB sticks with Linux distribution (ChromeOS) installers?
Honestly that's not a lot. It probably won't make a dent in either ChromeOS or Linux without considerable marketing effort and the right user expectations.
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#23I mean, a "live" option booted off a USB drive is pretty common for linux? Pretty sure Slackware has one, and probably most other distributions?
I think this actually installs ChromeOS Flex? I guess Google will do anything to increase their ad-delivery surface?
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#24Can I use this to upgrade my Chromebook that Google won't upgrade anymore?
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#25Old outdated computer will probably not have usb-3 so using it as a live-cd will be painfully slow.
You’re overestimating how old a pc has to be not to support Windows 11. My parents have a Latitude 5470 (I think?) with a 7th gen i5, 16gb memory, 1tb ssd, and most definitely USB 3. It’s a perfectly adequate machine for running a browser + office suite, but according to Microsoft it’s e-waste because of Windows 11’s TPM-2 requirement.
Obviously for the HN crowd there are workarounds (my mom has actually been getting along with PopOS pretty well), but this could probably have met her needs just as well.
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#26This is a bootable USB memory stick with ChromeOS Flex on it.
Some people in the comments seem to think it's a live USB stick. But the press release says:
"a straightforward way to install a secure, cloud-first operating system on compatible laptops"
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#27Interesting idea - could it be done for a Linux distro?
I do not understand this question. Is there a reason you cannot install Linux ? Linux can be installed from a USB and should work on any system running windows 10. If Linux is too heavy for your system, there is always NetBSD. I have NetBSD on an AMD 300MHz (= PII) with 512 MB memory and it runs fine.
That was basically my question – why install ChromeOS instead of a light Linux distro?
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#28I booted chromeos flex on a >12 year old laptop earlier this year and had a good experience with it. I wrote a bit about it here https://konaraddi.com/writing/2026-01-01-chromeos-flex/ (tl;dr tried to use fedora at first but no luck with WiFi out of the box then I used chromeos flex and it worked out of the box)
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#29Looks like we can do free it from here. https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11541904?hl=e...
I'm trying it now to upgrade a 2017 Acer Chromebook.
Re: $3 ChromeOS Flex stick will revive old and outdated computers
#30Old outdated computer will probably not have usb-3 so using it as a live-cd will be painfully slow.
You’re overestimating how old a pc has to be not to support Windows 11. My parents have a Latitude 5470 (I think?) with a 7th gen i5, 16gb memory, 1tb ssd, and most definitely USB 3. It’s a perfectly adequate machine for running a browser + office suite, but according to Microsoft it’s e-waste because of Windows 11’s TPM-2 requirement. Obviously for the HN crowd there are workarounds (my mom has actually been getting…
Yeah, I have a 2019 Core i9 machine with 40 GB of RAM and a (for the time) decent GPU. It refuses to install Windows 11 because of lacking the right kind of TPM it seems.
I wouldn't put Chrome OS on it though -- Debian runs quite nicely. :)