Once upon a time Cloudreadyan independent project developed by the startup Neverware which aimed to make it easier to port the Google operating system Chrome OS on normal PCs. At the end of 2020, Google acquired Neverware and with it the ida of the operating system Cloudreadycapable of addressing a much wider audience of users than that of Chrome OS.
Chrome OS, in fact, is the Linux kernel-based operating system developed by Google designed mainly for laptop-type devices, known as Chromebook. It provides a lightweight and secure environment focused on the use of web applications and, in particular, the Mountain View company’s services. The approach of Chrome OS, unlike for example the one historically followed by Windows (which is also changing in recent times…), consists in placing a platform in the hands of the user cloud-based that relies little on the hardware present on the machine and takes advantage of the computational power available on remote servers.
Google: those who abandon Windows 10 can switch to ChromeOS Flex
Microsoft has stepped up its campaign upgrade to Windows 11. On compatible systems (and only on those…) aggressive messages appear that encourage you to move from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It is possible to block them, as we explained in detail in the article, but the fact remains that starting from 14 October 2025 Microsoft will no longer release new updates for Windows 10 systems, even those intended to fix safety issues.
Users interested in installing the most updated version of the Microsoft operating system, have until now been able to benefit from simple tricks to use Windows 11 on a non-compatible PC. According to the most recent evidence, these tricks will continue to work but with the release of Windows 11 24H2 the system will not work on systems with old processors, which specifically do not support education POPCNT.
After all this, Google has seen fit to seize the opportunity and point out that there is an alternative and it’s called ChromeOS Flex.
ChromeOS Flex presented as an alternative to Windows, also for business use
As can be seen from the presentation page “Try ChromeOS Flex today”, the operating system is not at all described as a platform for “geeks”. Indeed, one of the most recommended uses is in the field business. Instead of “scrapping” that old PC based on Windows 7 or Windows 10, ChromeOS Flex can help give it new life reducing the volume of electronic waste and significantly extending the life of devices with a modern and always updated operating system.
ChromeOS Flex, as already highlighted, is an operating system cloud-first which can meet a wide range of needs: from the normal use of desktop PCs and notebooks, to the conversion of digital kiosk systems and tools for the operation of information screens.
How to download ChromeOS Flex and prepare a bootable USB stick
You don’t even need to provide your data to Google to download ChromeOS Flex. As we saw in another article, it is in fact possible to download the platform and install ChromeOS Flex on a PC using an extension for the Chrome browser. This is the Chromebook Recovery Utility – don’t let the message “Identify your Chromebook“. The Google utility allows you to create a bootable USB stick for installing ChromeOS Flex on any computer.
Just simply click Select a template from a list then indicate Google ChromeOS Flex in the first drop-down menu; ChromeOS Flex In the second.
Next, simply indicate a USB stick that holds the ChromeOS Flex installation files (its capacity must not be less than 8 GB).
Using the ChromeOS Flex image and writing with the Linux dd utility
More experienced users can possibly download the ChromeOS Flex image from Google servers, extract the contents of the compressed archive in order to obtain a single file with the extension .bin.
At this point, using the command dd on a system GNU/Linux (we also used it to copy Windows to SSD without using paid programs), it is possible to write the ChromeOS Flex binary file to a USB stick connected to the system in the meantime. There syntax to use is the following:
sudo dd if=latest.bin of=/dev/sdN bs=4M status=progress
In education, latest.bin corresponds to the name of the ChromeOS Flex installation media image, downloaded from Google servers; /dev/sdN is the identifier corresponding to the USB drive intended to host ChromeOS Flex.
It is obviously essential to make sure that the identifier /dev/sdN is the correct one to avoid unwanted overwriting, and consequent data loss, of the contents of other storage units connected to the system.
On Linux systems, you can locate the identifiers assigned to each storage unit using various system commands and tools. The command lsblk, for example, shows the structure of storage drives, including identifiers. You can run the command without any arguments to get a detailed list of storage drives and their partitions. Alternatively you can use commands blkid, df e sudo fdisk -l. You can also take advantage of the famous graphical utility GParted.
The opening image is from Google.