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Journalism of Courage
Google Chromebooks are often praised by users because they offer a good combination of performance and battery life. Now, Google seems to be working on the ability to install ChromeOS Flex to extend the lifespan of Chromebooks that have reached their end-of-life support.
According to ChromeUnboxed, Google recently added a new commit to the Chromium repository with a reference to ‘Flexor’, which might be a ChromeOS Flex project. The commit makes a new 10GB partition on Chromebooks which hints at Google testing ChromeOS Flex for its existing ChromeOS powered laptops.
It also has a welcome message that says “Welcome from Flexor. Start Flex-ing”. However, the project seems to be in its early stages right now.
ChromeOS Flex is an operating system that resembles ChromeOS but works on almost all outdated PCs. It is based on the Chromium OS project, which Google uses to develop ChromeOS.
While most of the features are the same and ChromeOS Flex receives the same updates as Google’s own operating system, Flex doesn’t support Android apps and lacks access to the Google Play Store.
Another major difference is support for Linux. Normal ChromeOS laptops can use Linux, but devices running on Flex might lack the hardware support since they are designed to run smoothly on older systems.
Google also maintains a list of certified devices that can run ChromeOS Flex without issues. It can be downloaded for free and currently works with Intel and AMD processors. You can also try ChromeOS Flex on your PC by installing it on a USB drive. Also, Google is yet to confirm if ChromeOS Flex will be available on more Chromebooks.
The tech giant recently announced it would extend the lifespan of Chromebooks from 8 years to 10 years for models released before 2021, with all products launched in 2024 offering 10 years of regular automatic updates.
