W10 > ChromeFlexOS > Any Experience?

[Darnoc]

Hello,

 

Would you consider upgrading W10 only devices to ChromeFlexOS?

 

Sounds like an obvious choice if you have a mixed OS environment, Im curious to know your expereinces and if this should be a serious strategy or a non-starter.

 

Thank you!

 

Conrad

[timbo343]

Would you not look at Windows 11? We have trialed Windows 11 (from the media creation tool off microsoft.com - actually it was today) and to our amazement our i5 3rd gen processors actually install the latest version from MS without any warnings or hacks to bypass the TPM error.

 

What's the spec of the devices you are planning on changing from Win10 to ChromeFlex?

[Darnoc]

Thats interesting Tim, thanks, they are technically not W11 compliant and although I have heard that you can load up W11 on a W10 only device, im not confident that this will 100% be supported down the line. I think its only a matter of time beofre they close the loop.."BUT" Id be equally keen to follow your progress on your new W11 devices to see if they keep getting all the updates etc, security etc. T470 is what we are looking at upgrading, Ci5 7th Gen TPM 2.0 16/256

[timbo343]

Thats interesting Tim, thanks, they are technically not W11 compliant and although I have heard that you can load up W11 on a W10 only device, im not confident that this will 100% be supported down the line. I think its only a matter of time beofre they close the loop.."BUT" Id be equally keen to follow your progress on your new W11 devices to see if they keep getting all the updates etc, security etc. T470 is what we are looking at upgrading, Ci5 7th Gen TPM 2.0 16/256

 

I saw a youtube video about the newer versions of Windows 11 needed SSE4.2 on the CPU so thought i'd see if our 3rd gen CPUs have it, they do and Windows 11 installs fine on to them. A couple of drivers are needed to be installed but otherwise no TPM errors.

[Darnoc]

Thank you Tim, most interesting!

[DrCheese]

We ChromeOS flex'd all our DFE laptops that we had left - Works perfectly on officially supported devices.

 

We've tried it on some devices that FlexOS doesn't have on their officially supported list with mixed results - Some are ok, but others have just stopped working randomly or don't work at all

 

Long story short, I would *ONLY* run this in production on devices Google officially supports. You don't want to run it on say... 2 IT suites worth of machines only to walk in one day and find they've all bricked themselves.

[jthompson]

Yup, definitely keep in mind that ChromeOS Flex also has a certified hardware list, which doesn't really go back as far as you'd like. You're facing pretty much the same jeopardy as with Windows, only I would expect ChromeOS breakages to come out of the blue a bit more than with Windows.

 

Windows 10 also has an official hardware support list too, like Windows 11. It's just that there was never as much of a deal made of it.

 

I'm expecting Windows 11 breakage on older hardware to come with an annual release (e.g. when going from 24H2 to 25H2) rather than with a monthly cumulative update within a release. If that were the case, you have a bit of time to still run the earlier release, unlike with ChromeOS breaking on you.

 

I think you have to go back to a Core2 before you find something that can't actually boot 24H2.

[gszech]

Hello,

 

Would you consider upgrading W10 only devices to ChromeFlexOS?

 

Sounds like an obvious choice if you have a mixed OS environment, Im curious to know your expereinces and if this should be a serious strategy or a non-starter.

 

Thank you!

 

Conrad

 

We used ChromeFlexOS at many schools mainly to extend the lifetime of older Windows laptops. The system just works, it's quick to install and it's easy to manage.

As someone already mentioned, check if the device is on the list, but the list is also out of date so it's worth testing one device if the sound, touchpad , wifi and other obvious things work.

 

This approach is good if budget is tight.

[MrEprise]

...I think you have to go back to a Core2 before you find something that can't actually boot 24H2.

 

That's right. I think it was highlighted in another thread that 24H2 now requires Population Count, which isn't present in any Core2 CPU but was first introduced in 1st-gen i3/5/7 CPUs.

[DrCheese]

only I would expect ChromeOS breakages to come out of the blue a bit more than with Windows.

 

Yes, the unofficial devices we tried it on we'd find they'd work fine until a random update would kill them. Eg, The DFE Geobooks worked fine until recently, but now just make a loud hiss when sitting at the log in screen & crash.

I ran it at home on my non supported Dell XPS 13 from 2015 - Worked great.... until an update caused it to boot loop. Not just that update, but later ones as well.

 

As I said, you really don't want to rely on this in production on unsupported devices unless you enjoy walking into a ton of broken machines. (Of course, depends on the amount of machines & your overall risk, eg 5 machines.. fine. 30+ not so much...)

 

If you need to stick to Windows 10 past the support date, buy the extra support (Super cheap for schools) or swap to the LTCS builds.

Edited November 7, 2024 by DrCheese

[slugshead]

I certainly won't be installing w11 on devices that are unsupported.

 

ChromeOS Flex is certainly on my radar though.

[Darnoc]

Those DFE Geobooks were not great.....

[DrCheese]

Those DFE Geobooks were not great.....

 

Nope, they were awful. But putting Flex on them gave us a cheap "Student has broken hand" laptop pile that would have gone in the WEEE bin otherwise (Which is where they will now go...)

[DDR5]

Flex does work good on older equipment but we had to be a little careful with staff expectations, as they do not have the same functionality as Chromebooks. Generally they work fine, but you can't deploy apps from the Play Store to them as we can our Chromebooks, so while they are a good alternative to the scrap man, they are slightly limited and cannot be used in exactly the same way.

[synaesthesia]

We ChromeOS flex'd all our DFE laptops that we had left - Works perfectly on officially supported devices.

 

We've tried it on some devices that FlexOS doesn't have on their officially supported list with mixed results - Some are ok, but others have just stopped working randomly or don't work at all

 

Long story short, I would *ONLY* run this in production on devices Google officially supports. You don't want to run it on say... 2 IT suites worth of machines only to walk in one day and find they've all bricked themselves.

 

Don't suppose any of those DFE laptops were the Dynafails were they? Wouldn't mind making use of some of those on Chrome but I could never get the trackpads to work.

[DrCheese]

Flex does work good on older equipment but we had to be a little careful with staff expectations, as they do not have the same functionality as Chromebooks. Generally they work fine, but you can't deploy apps from the Play Store to them as we can our Chromebooks, so while they are a good alternative to the scrap man, they are slightly limited and cannot be used in exactly the same way.

 

Aye. We also found some 2-in-1 laptops would work with the touchscreen, but wouldn't give you the same nice "tablet" experience a real Chromebook would when in Tablet mode.

[Darnoc]

Is it essential to have apps from the play store?

[DDR5]

Is it essential to have apps from the play store?

 

Of course not. Just in our position we have around 120 Chromebooks that have apps installed. We just had to make sure that users knew that the Flex devices wouldn't operate in the same way as the Chromebooks. Often, people aren't aware of this and expect Flex devices to work in exactly the same way, yet they don't.

[DrCheese]

Ah, in our case we hadn't deployed any Chromebooks at all in the past so it didn't matter for us.

 

I butchered them to make them "365 books" anyway - No Google apps show, All links to 365. Login is via Azure AD also.

[Darnoc]

That sounds like a great idea! Can that be done to non-W10 laptops?

[dhicks]

Can that be done to non-W10 laptops?

 

We've installed ChromeOS Flex on some 12-year-old laptops (non-managed devices for people to take home), it seemed to work okay. We did have an issue with some 6-year-old NUC7JY devices we had in the staffroom, those conked out when upgrading from ChromeOS 128 to 129, completly failing to boot. We had Windows 11 installed on some older hardware, too, just before summer - I think our oldest Windows 11 all-in-one was around 8 years old, but we've replaced those with newer machines now as they were quite slow and would possibly / probably have update issues at some point.

[DrCheese]

That sounds like a great idea! Can that be done to non-W10 laptops?

 

Do you mean the flex ones? If so then yes, they get the same policy as normal Chromebooks. You just have to pay for a Chrome license which is around £35 per device. In our case it made the DFE devices usable, as in a trolley environment Windows just couldn't cope at all (Super low spec!)

[Darnoc]

@DrCheese

 

"I butchered them to make them "365 books...."

 

So, we can turn an old W10 laptop into a W365 book without worrying about W10 turn off next year?

[DrCheese]

@DrCheese

 

"I butchered them to make them "365 books...."

 

So, we can turn an old W10 laptop into a W365 book without worrying about W10 turn off next year?

 

Yes, when I say W365book I mean that they run Chrome OS Flex, login with Azure AD & then we hid all the access routes to Google Sheets/write & replaced with shortcuts to the Office 365 web alternatives (Word/Excel).

Ovibiously they still use the Chrome Browser on the devices.

 

As above tho, I cavet it with that our devices (DFE Cheapo devices) are supported on Chrome OS flex for a number of years.

If you have older Windows 10 only devices, it may be that the ChromeOS support window is the same as Windows 10 - Eg, we have some Dell Optiplex 9010 AIOs that expire ChromeFlex Support in October 2025 anyway, making it pointless to swap.

[MrEprise]

...Eg, The DFE Geobooks worked fine until recently, but now just make a loud hiss when sitting at the log in screen & crash.

 

I think it's a general issue with the Geobooks - they do that loud hissing periodically even when running W10 on them. Students often bring them to us when they're doing that exclaiming "I think it's about to explode!"