Google has announced that its Chrome OS operating system is coming out of Chromebooks in order to give power to your old PCs and Macs. Chrome OS Flex has arrived, which can be installed for free even on computers that have up to 13 years old and bring them to life. Let’s remember that old computers fail with the new versions that Windows and MacOS bring to the market.
Those who want to try an early version of Chrome OS Flex must register on the Chrome Enterprise website and provide some personal information. Of course, for now, the operating system is in the early access phase and “you may experience some instability,” they warn from Google. For now, trial mode is for business customers only.
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What the Mountain View signature does promise is that, even if your computer is old, Chrome OS Flex will offer security to your PC or Mac, they will have a fast startup, they will not slow down over time, they will update automatically in the background and can be managed from the cloud. Chrome OS Flex is based on the source code of Chrome OS and therefore will have the same update rate. This OS could be defined as a version of Chrome OS that adapts to the hardware of the computer.
It should be noted that it will not offer the Play Store, so Android apps will not be able to be installed, but if you have a not very old computer, it will be able to support Linux apps.
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How to do this update
If you have a PC or a Mac you can access this update for free. Google itself has launched this operating system thinking about old computers that run very slow with Windows or MacOS or that no longer have access to security updates in an agile way.
If you want to try the software, even though we’re still in early builds, signing up gives you a chance to try it out with a USB before you jump in and replace Windows or Mac with Chrome OS. The company promises that the download only takes a few minutes.
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How to try Chrome OS on an old laptop without erasing Windows, with Chrome OS Flex
You can first create a bootable USB drive of Chrome OS Flex to test it before installing it, as we said and as the image above shows in “Step 1”. If you like how it works and you’re ready to say goodbye to the operating system you’re using, then that’s when you should install Chrome on your computer. You can also push Chrome OS Flex to more company devices using a USB drive or network deployment.
Remember that what this operating system offers you is cloud-based management. Chrome OS Flex and Chrome OS are not the same. The former lacks features like app virtualization (we explained earlier that you won’t be able to load Android apps on these old handsets).
To try Chrome OS Flex you need a Windows or Mac PC and Google Chrome, to create the installation USB; a USB flash drive with 8 GB capacity or more; a PC with X86-64 architecture from Intel or AMD; a computer with at least 4 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage; and processor and graphics, if possible, that is from after 2010.