Chrome OS Flex
NOTE - this is on an unsupported device
After some discussion in another thread I decided to try Chrome OS. Not having a Chromebook my options seem to be limited to Chrome OS Flex on my 2022 Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro.
Install
In Windows 10 I followed the instructions on their site until it came to write to USB where it balked. I tried in Solus but Linux is not supported (Windows, Mac and Chrome only). After messing with settings I decided to try downloading the file and install from local. EUREKA!!
1st Boot
Login to Google 1st. Then there is a welcome screen with explanations and tutorials so naturally I skipped that. Settings are pretty easy with categories on the left, toggles on the right. You can scroll through the whole thing without clicking a category. It has light and dark modes and more good wallpapers than any distro I have ever seen. There's a familiar bottom panel which can be moved to the L or R side.
Miscellaneous
Boot time is very fast, 10 seconds to login screen, 1 second from there to desktop.
Scaling is perfect on my 2560 x 1600 monitor, and there's a slider to adjust.
Touchpad acceleration is perfect.
Integration with all things Google is perfect. The panel calendar showed all my Google appointments without further intervention and adding my Fastmail Calendars was a breeze. Maps, Gmail, Keep all worked seamlessly.
Updates are almost invisible. I saw a notification that said an update was ready, reboot to install, so I did. 30 seconds later the device was rebooted and updated. Had I ignored the notice I think it would have waited till next power off cycle and finished automatically, though I am unsure.
Linux development environment installed and in that I installed Neofetch.
the next items are likely due to my unsupported device and I cannot really count them as cons, though they are critically impacting my user experience
Sleep is broken. When the lid is closed on this device it powers off. When it falls asleep it is unresponsive to all but holding the power button 5 seconds to hard shut down.
The Chrome store is weird. The first few apps I looked at to install had no install button and were marked no longer available. Maybe because this is an unsupported device? Some apps can be installed from the Chrome browser at certain websites if the circled symbol appears
This also works in Solus. No more half hour 3rd party Spotify installs for me.
Play store for Android apps is not available on this device. This is definitely because it is unsupported as sometime around 2018 all new Chromebooks got the Play store.
Conclusion
For someone that already uses the Google ecosystem (M$, and Apple too as their data could be easily imported) and is not a power user it is easy to see the appeal of a Chromebook. Everything works together seamlessly. Very little horsepower is required to run fast and smoothly and most household tasks can be achieved, though some adjusting to different software will need to happen. This is perfect for my elderly mom.
For someone that wants some distance from the prying eyes of big tech, look elsewhere.
Notes for DE devs
The desktop environment in Chrome OS is good. Clean, elegant and fast. Fractional scaling, touchpad, gestures and responsiveness are all second to none. It is not very customizable, to be sure, but it has the fundamentals right.
I'm gonna format and install Win 11 now as the sleep disfunction is a deal breaker
