ChromeOS Flex now available to run on aging Macs and PCs

AppleInsider

Google is rolling out ChromeOS Flex as an enterprise option to replace operating systems on old Macs and PCs, letting users turn their aging hardware into Chromebooks.

ChromeOS Flex is an enterprise solution for old Macs and PCs

As computers age, a lot of problems can arise that affect performance and stability. This usually leads to businesses replacing a computer entirely rather than dealing with poor performance.

With ChromeOS Flex, Google hopes to help businesses keep older computers around for longer. The lightweight operating system is designed to work well on older hardware to extend the life of a product, which can lead to reduced e-waste.

The OS can be quickly deployed via a USB stick or over a network connection. Systems running ChromeOS Flex can be managed via a Chrome Enterprise Upgrade using the Google Admin Console.

Google has approved 295 devices so far for ChromeOS Flex. However, it can be installed on other hardware, but non-certified hardware may run into performance issues.

The officially supported Macs include:

Model Name	Current Status	End of Support
21.5-inch iMac (2010)	Certified	2024
21.5-inch iMac (2011)	Minor issues expected	2024
Mac mini (2014)	Certified	2026
MacBook (2010)	Minor issues expected	2023
MacBook Air (2012)	Certified	2025
MacBook Air (2014)	Certified	2026
MacBook Air (2015/2017)	Certified	2027
13-inch MacBook Pro (2012/2013)	Certified	2025
15-inch MacBook Pro (2013/2014)	Certified	2025

Google notes that the webcam is not functional for the MacBook Air (2014) or MacBook Air (2015/2017) models.

Users can install ChromeOS Flex and replace the original operating system, although it is also possible to partition the hard drive and install it as a separate OS. This is a system intended for deployment on aging enterprise hardware and is only available by signing up for early access, for now.

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edr

Crappy Google OS that spies on every single action, and every single page, now "READY"! to spy on your older machines. No thanks. Those old machines still work perfectly well with their original OS as long as you're using an SSD and keep it clean or reinstall the original OS if necessary.

mpantone

edr said:

Crappy Google OS that spies on every single action, and every single page, now "READY"! to spy on your older machines. No thanks. Those old machines still work perfectly well with their original OS as long as you're using an SSD and keep it clean or reinstall the original OS if necessary.

First of all, it's ChromeOS not GoogleOS.

None of the Macs listed above can run the latest version of macOS (Monterey). Remember that Apple only provides updates for the current macOS version as well as security patches for the two prior versions (currently Big Sur and Crapalina). When macOS Ventura is released this fall, Apple will discontinue security patches for Crapalina.

Let's use the MacBook (2010) as an example. It was released with OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 and the last supported version was OS X 10.13 High Sierra which transitioned to unsupported status in November 2020. That means this particular Mac+OS combination is vulnerable to security issues that have been revealed since that time. 

Remember that this includes no updates to Safari. Web browsers are typically the most vulnerable end-user applications on a typical computer. Of course, one can mitigate these risks by switching to a different browser (Firefox or one of the Chromium-based browsers) and avoiding Safari use.

ChromeOSPlex presumably receives critical security updates periodically. Of course, one has the option of installing Linux (or possibly FreeBSD) on these systems.

No one is pointing a gun at the heads of the older Macs' owners and saying they need to switch to ChromeOS Plex. If you don't want to run ChromeOS Plex, you don't need to. However this is just an announcement that the option exists.

In the same way, you don't need to eat a hardboiled egg for lunch today. But it is an option.

gatorguy

edr said:

Crappy Google OS that spies on every single action, and every single page, now "READY"! to spy on your older machines. No thanks. Those old machines still work perfectly well with their original OS as long as you're using an SSD and keep it clean or reinstall the original OS if necessary.

ChromeOS is not for you anyway. It's made for enterprise use, in more simple terms you can understand by businesses with aging hardware. For them it may be an attractive option in order to get just a couple of years more service life from already paid for computer systems in their networks.

mangakatten

Hehe, my 2008 iMac is not supported. I guess I’ll just continue with El Capitan. 

zeus423

Darn, it won’t run on my school’s eMacs from ‘02. Yes, they still run with all original parts.

Fidonet127

So if you’re an enterprise, you can install this for up to four years of supported use. One Mac is only supported till next year. If I was a business I’d want more years than that of support to completely install a new os, train and tinker around too figure things out. 

9secondkox2

Fidonet127 said:

So if you’re an enterprise, you can install this for up to four years of supported use. One Mac is only supported till next year. If I was a business I’d want more years than that of support to completely install a new os, train and tinker around too figure things out. 

And you can only run supported apps 

basically a lot of “lite” apps or strange knockoffs. 

If you only need email and ms office, this will work. 

For most other things, it’s a dud. 

And if you value privacy and security in your business, it’s a dud. 

Basically a waste of time and energy for most businesses and end users. 

chasm

I would literally throw my 2012 MBP into an incinerator before I would install SpyOS on it.

If you're really determined to keep an old Mac around beyond the safe window, there's an absolutely free way to do so: disconnect it from the internet.

That's it! It will keep running that old OS and those old apps for as long as you can keep the machinery going, which could be quite a long time. As long as it's not connecting to the internet, your attack/infection vector is almost zero. Be sure to make bootable backups of it so if when the HD goes south you can replace that and keep going. All those old games, old productivity apps, should still work. Not having the internet on there is a pain for some uses, sure, but it is a small price to pay for being able to safely run any and all obsolete apps that don't depend on the internet that you like.

Best of all, Google can't see you at all when you're on that machine!

22july2013

"ChromeOS" should be renamed "ChromosomeOS" since a virus is just a chromosome surrounded by a coating of protein. In this case the protein is the trademark "Google".

argos.panoptis

Not to belabor the obvious, but Linux anybody?  My 2013 15" MBpro still runs MacOS, and quite well actually, if I leave it 2 generations back.  Despite this, if you want something absolutely modern, linux is a perfectly viable, inexpensive solution, available in dozens of flavors and usage/support cases.  any MacBook Pro or iMac would literally blaze with Linux, and mine is no different.

Perfectly viable, light, modern.  Childishly easy to install in most cases, with great community support, and covers all intel Macs and maybe even an eMac or two (lubuntu powerpc edition should cover it, it works on my G3).  Even if you're not particularly technically oriented (and enterprise actually has IT staff for support), keep a backup of your data, and on the rare occasion something goes wrong, just re-install.  You know, like everybody with Windows does, even when they know how to fix it - it's just faster.

Why anybody would use ChromeOS is a complete mystery to me.  It's garbage spyware.  Oh, and it's based on Linux, so if you're thinking of installing it, then you're already doing what I'm suggesting.

Linux in 2022 is a far cry from what it was in 2010.

Paul_B

The MacOS is written in Objective-C.  Alphabet is learning Objective-C!  Pass the popcorn...

danox

Very Creepy move by Google…..

dewme

argos.panoptis said:

Not to belabor the obvious, but Linux anybody?  My 2013 15" MBpro still runs MacOS, and quite well actually, if I leave it 2 generations back.  Despite this, if you want something absolutely modern, linux is a perfectly viable, inexpensive solution, available in dozens of flavors and usage/support cases.  any MacBook Pro or iMac would literally blaze with Linux, and mine is no different.

Perfectly viable, light, modern.  Childishly easy to install in most cases, with great community support, and covers all intel Macs and maybe even an eMac or two (lubuntu powerpc edition should cover it, it works on my G3).  Even if you're not particularly technically oriented (and enterprise actually has IT staff for support), keep a backup of your data, and on the rare occasion something goes wrong, just re-install.  You know, like everybody with Windows does, even when they know how to fix it - it's just faster.

Why anybody would use ChromeOS is a complete mystery to me.  It's garbage spyware.  Oh, and it's based on Linux, so if you're thinking of installing it, then you're already doing what I'm suggesting.

Linux in 2022 is a far cry from what it was in 2010.

I agree. The newer Linux distros are actually very nice and pleasant to use. Heck, even a Raspberry Pi 4 running a newer version of Linux tailored for the Pi would actually serve nicely for a nontrivial number of computer users with fairly modest computing needs. It's not a powerhouse but it's not a slouch either. Frankly, if Microsoft sold a native Office 365 for Linux I think a lot of sellers of new lower end Wintel machines would instantly soil themselves because a good chunk of corporate America would quickly extend the lives of their current computing resources for several years by using a decent Linux version to get them to the next big funding opportunity. 

Whether you like Google or not, the solution they are offering here is reasonable in terms of putting a time-box around the inevitable, which is when they believe your current computing hardware resource is essentially e-waste.  Linux doesn't explicitly put a drop-dead date on their continued support of specific hardware systems but they do make some guarantees around how long they will support the LTS versions of their OS. This seems like a reasonable approach. Once you've committed to a particular LTS version of Linux and discovered that it meets your needs you don't have to think about it until the LTS date arrives. Chances are good that a newer LTS version of Linux will arrive within a year or so and potentially allow you to delay the inevitable for another year or two.

Considering the scope of what Google is doing here, providing what is effectively hospice care for older personal computers, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it at all. It will definitely make sense for some users but I doubt that it is of much interest at all for the AI crowd who are primarily focused on the other side or the computing lifecycle - the shiny new toys that are rolling off the assembly line today or in the near future.

mpantone

argos.panoptis said:

Not to belabor the obvious, but Linux anybody?

...

Linux in 2022 is a far cry from what it was in 2010.

Well, it's not like Linux is new. If someone had an old machine that was no longer receiving security updates, the Linux option has been there all the while.

The whole point of this AI article is that there is ANOTHER option beyond what existed before.

And there's FreeBSD. And probably some other weird OSes that I'm not familiar with. 

I'm pretty sure that an Internet search using the parameters "alternative operating systems mac" would turn these up.

Oh, and Linux on the desktop is an abject failure. It sucked in 2010, it sucked in 1997, it still sucks in 2022. Today I do my Linux suffering every six months when I boot Raspian on an RPi4. Linux is great as an embedded minimal OS like Libreelec or whatever version runs on my Nintendo SNES Classic. But desktop Linux is a horrendous time suck.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried every single Linux distro

davidw

argos.panoptis said:

Not to belabor the obvious, but Linux anybody?  My 2013 15" MBpro still runs MacOS, and quite well actually, if I leave it 2 generations back.  Despite this, if you want something absolutely modern, linux is a perfectly viable, inexpensive solution, available in dozens of flavors and usage/support cases.  any MacBook Pro or iMac would literally blaze with Linux, and mine is no different.

Perfectly viable, light, modern.  Childishly easy to install in most cases, with great community support, and covers all intel Macs and maybe even an eMac or two (lubuntu powerpc edition should cover it, it works on my G3).  Even if you're not particularly technically oriented (and enterprise actually has IT staff for support), keep a backup of your data, and on the rare occasion something goes wrong, just re-install.  You know, like everybody with Windows does, even when they know how to fix it - it's just faster.

Why anybody would use ChromeOS is a complete mystery to me.  It's garbage spyware.  Oh, and it's based on Linux, so if you're thinking of installing it, then you're already doing what I'm suggesting.

Linux in 2022 is a far cry from what it was in 2010.

How about a patch from DosDude1 or Open Source Legacy Patch (OSLP)?

http://dosdude1.com/software.html

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/START.html#how-do-i-get-started

Patched a friend 2009  white MacBook, whose last OS supported was El Capitan, to run High Sierra, Mojave and then Catalina with DosDude1 patch, so he can use TurboTax. A friend of his buys the CD with 5 users every year and only needs 3, so he gets it for free. But TurboTax began requiring a newer MacOS version every year starting with High Sierra in 2018. So I installed the DosDude1 patch on to a bootable external every year and it works just fine for his TT needs. Any graphics intensive program bogs down as there's no GPU acceleration on older white MacBooks and only 6GB RAM max on his 2009. He really only uses the MacBook for e-mail and word processing stuff and El Capitan does the job. This so he doesn't have to type long messages or fill out forms on his iPad. (Plus it connects to an old B/W laser printer.)

Now I patched it to MacOS Monterey using OSLP (2022 TT now requires a least Big Sur) and am impress. OSLP has some sort of software graphic acceleration and runs much better than the DosDude1 Catalina patch. Plus running the latest Safari browser isn't all the bad. So long as he's not trying to watch any HD video on YouTube.  

I got a 2010 (white unibody) MacBook running OSLP MacOS Monterey and it's much faster (than the 2009) because I installed an SSD, 8GB RAM and it has a better GPU. Being able to get on the internet with the latest most secure Safari is the main reason for the patch. Over 85% of what I need a laptop for is for using the internet. Can't testify how well it will run newest software and most my old software won't run on MacOS Monterey anyway. Might spend the extra $40 to max out RAM to 16GB (2 8GB stick) . It's a 12 year old, last of the Intel C2D, white MacBook, running the latest MacOS Monterey, better than any older PC laptop running Windows 10 Home. So far, everyone of my friends with an 8 year (or so) old PC laptop that came  Windows 8, regretted upgrading to Windows 10 (for free) as it rendered their laptop almost useless. And that's with Microsoft saying their old PC laptop supported Windows 10.  

I also have my 2013 MacBook Air (11inch 4GB) running Monterey using OSLP with no issue what so ever. But that's not unexpected as its last MacOS was Big Sur. I read that Monterey is a much better OS than Big Sur. But went from Catalina to Monterey so I can't say for sure.        

The patches takes about 45 minutes to an hour. But so far, never had a problem. Just be fully prepare ahead of time, install on to a blank drive, followed the instructions and be patient as at times, it will seem like the process froze but will continue after what seems like a forever wait.