Cloudready

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,956
Location
Northants
Hi all,

Anybody tried https://www.neverware.com/freedownload#intro-text ? It's ChromeOS basically but not just limited to Chromebooks.

I recently got a little second hand Geoflex laptop just for browsing with the below specs:

Celeron N4000
4GB DDR4 2133
11.6 inch 1920x1080 IPS touchscreen
32gb eMMc, I disabled this and installed a WD green m2 SSD 240GB

Now believe it or not it runs Windows 10 surprisingly well but I prefer Linux usually so installed Pop!_OS, which also ran very well. However I stumbled upon Cloudready and thought I'd try it out not expecting to work as this machine isn't listed in the tried and tested list.

I'm happy to say it all worked, apart from the touchscreen which I never use anyway but will probably work at some point in the future, and oh man, its sooooo fast and has lovely smooth animations, no doubt because there isn't much to the OS so not tons of services running, though you can install some flatpaks and obviously chrome apps.
Not only is it super fast the battery life is out of this world, I used it for a solid 5 hours and still had 34% left!

So if you have a laptop just for browsing you really should try it out.

ChZ0IPq.png
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
3,103
I had it running in virtualbox in 2016 to test out some stuff in chromiumos & it seemed to be stable.
I also put it on a chromebook c710 with coreboot for a weekend & it broke on installing a OS update.
I didn't really use it for any extended amount of time as a desktop os tho.

It also stopped working on virtualbox so I set it up on QEMU instead in 2018

Not really used it since then but it seemed ok if u can put up with ChromeOS without playstore. (or security features of chromebooks like verified boot)

It seems like cloudready is used a lot in schools where they can re-use old laptops etc.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,956
Location
Northants
I've yet to get an update, its every 6 weeks apparently, hopefully nothing breaks then!
I'm just really taken back how good it is for a browsing machine, never thought I'd move away from Pop!_OS but its just so fast, even the scrolling in Chrome is 10x smoother than my main Win 10 laptop, colour me impressed.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2007
Posts
5,613
Location
England
It would take a lot for me to switch from OpenSUSE LEAP now that I have got used to it. My laptop is mainly just for browsing but most of the time I don't use it (I live in a bedsit so using my desktop machine is like 3 steps away from my door). It does look good though from that screenshot. OpenSUSE LEAP with KDE is pretty ugly but practical.
 
Associate
Joined
20 Jul 2005
Posts
586
Location
the dirty souf
I've got it running on my son's iMac. He's got a school google account and they use Chromebooks in class, so it was a no-brainer. I did install a debian chroot on it, but haven't used it much. If you want a low maintenance system to use with Google's services, it's fine, but I'd recommend a proper Linux distro, if you have needs beyond doing browser based stuff, and if you want to run Android apps, I'd go with an actual Android based distribution.
 
Associate
Joined
8 May 2021
Posts
1
Location
South Coast
Hi all,

Anybody tried https://www.neverware.com/freedownload#intro-text ? It's ChromeOS basically but not just limited to Chromebooks.

I recently got a little second hand Geoflex laptop just for browsing with the below specs:

Celeron N4000
4GB DDR4 2133
11.6 inch 1920x1080 IPS touchscreen
32gb eMMc, I disabled this and installed a WD green m2 SSD 240GB

Now believe it or not it runs Windows 10 surprisingly well but I prefer Linux usually so installed Pop!_OS, which also ran very well. However I stumbled upon Cloudready and thought I'd try it out not expecting to work as this machine isn't listed in the tried and tested list.

I'm happy to say it all worked, apart from the touchscreen which I never use anyway but will probably work at some point in the future, and oh man, its sooooo fast and has lovely smooth animations, no doubt because there isn't much to the OS so not tons of services running, though you can install some flatpaks and obviously chrome apps.
Not only is it super fast the battery life is out of this world, I used it for a solid 5 hours and still had 34% left!

So if you have a laptop just for browsing you really should try it out.

ChZ0IPq.png

Hi, appreciate this is an old post but just wondered how you got round the touchpad issue on Chrome OS? On the Geoflex I had (and the GeoBook 3X), the touchpad would constantly crash, only fixed by a log out / in. Worked fine in Win10.

Currently running an Acer S13 triple booting Mint, Win10 and Chrome OS using Brunch, but really like the Geoflex's dimensions and screen.

Cheers
 
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