I used ChromeOS Flex for a Day - A Developer's Review

Every six months or so, I install a new operating system on my laptop to get a feel of what some non-windows population is driving daily. I had never tried ChromeOS Flex before, which is a bit surprising since ChromeOS Flex is popular.

Installing ChromeOS Flex was very straightforward, get the ChromeOS Chrome extension, make a live drive using it, then boot into it and boom, It’s ready to be used. I had a handful of Operating Systems before but I didn’t know what I should be expecting from this one. It’s popular in high school in the United States and all but it isn’t so popular from where I come from. However, the main selling point I saw in ChromeOS for aspiring developers is its Linux Development Environment.

1. Familiarity and Ease of Use

   If you have been using Windows, ChromeOS will make you feel right at home with the entire layout. The taskbar, start menu, calendar, etc. are placed right where you would expect them to be. Also, the individual app windows also share the same layout. ChromeOS Flex is basically an entire operating system based on Chrome the web browser. Since more than a quarter of the world already is familiar with Chrome and Google services, it is extremely easy to use ChromeOS.

2. Development Environment

   ChromeOS Flex is an entire operating system on its own, however, it has full support for Linux. It takes just one click to create a Linux drive and run it from within ChromeOS itself. The tools and programs installed in the Linux drive easily interoperate with ChromeOS Flex, making it extremely easy to get both Linux’s versatility along ChromeOS’s ease of use.

3. Setup time

   It only took me around 30 minutes to completely set up my ChromeOS with all essential dev tools like VS Code, NodeJS, Git, PHP, composer etc. Since it’s literally running Debian, I had zero issues setting everything up.

In conclusion, ChromeOS Flex is like a transformer. In its base form, it is just Google Chrome running as an Operating System along with some Googley features, however, upon enabling the Linux Development Environment, it is a powerhouse with all the tools you could ever ask for. This makes it the perfect operating system for people who are looking to use a simple OS for their normal tasks but switch into pro mode once they are locked in to do some development.