Chrome OS Flex: Installing Linux Apps & 4 Month Review of Google’s New PC OS

foreign [Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers.com this time I'm going to return to Chrome OS Flex this is a new version of the Chrome operating system used on Google Chromebooks that can be installed on most desktop PCS and laptops in particular Chrome OS Flex is fast and secure and can be used to bring you life to older Hardware Chrome OS Flex is designed for web browsing and for running online applications like Google Docs however in this video I'm going to demonstrate how to install standard Linux applications and after that I'm going to reflect on my experience running Chrome OS Flex every day for four months foreign here we are booting into Chrome OS flex and I'll just enter my password and here we are on the desktop I explained how to get Chrome OS Flex in my last video but basically you need to go to the Chrome web store add the Chromebook recovery utility and run it to make a bootable USB drive that can be used to install the operating system on most computers note that since I made my last video Chrome OS Flex has come out of beta but why install instructions still work just fine anyway back here on a live system a launcher provides access to Applications most of which run from the cloud but on most systems it's also possible to use standard local Linux applications by installing a virtual machine to check if your computer supports this you need to go to settings and across here on the left if we scroll down you go to Advanced and if you find down here an option for developers with a turn on button next to Linux development environment you can install a Linux virtual machine this should be the case you should find this button on most systems but if we go across the Chrome OS Flex running on my old single core Netbook we can see that under Advanced the developer option does not exist another way to check is to open the application launcher and if there's a terminal icon available a Linux virtual machine can be installed and we don't have a terminal icon here but if we go back to the first system we do have a terminal icon there it is down here although if we run it up it doesn't do what you might expect because things aren't set up yet so let's click on setup which just takes us straight back to developer settings where we can turn on the Linux development environment and as so often in Computing the next thing we need to do is to click on next on the subsequent screen we then have to enter a username which defaults to the Google account you're logged in with in Chrome OS flex but you can change it if you want and here I'm going to change it to b e c we also have to allocate some disk space to the virtual machine the recommended space is 10 gigabytes we can change this later if we wish so here I'll go with the recommended setting and we'll click on install and there we are we're now installing the looks downloading a virtual machine here in Chrome OS Flex and as we speed on through you may be interested to know that what we're actually installing is Debian bullseye and there we are things have finished let's just close down settings to be tidy and we're running here a terminal let's close down that as well always like to be neat in these videos and will give ourselves a bit more space on the screen and what we've got here is a standard Linux terminal username EC at penguin I do like at penguin and here we could type any standard Linux command let's try an LS BLK Or List block devices it works we're running Linux isn't it amazing and if you want to know how to use the Linux terminal I've got a video All About That which I'll link to in the video description anyway what we're here to do is to install Linux applications and before we do this I think it's always wise to update our repositories so we'll type A sudo apt update like that which will just tell the machine to check it knows where all the software might be installing actually is won't take long to run through there we go and now let's install an actual application and I think the obvious one to do is Libra office so let's do a sudo at install the office like that and hope to have got that right it looks like I have do we wish to continue yes we do very exciting and as usual we'll speed on through and there we are it's finished and we'll now close down the terminal and when we'll do you'll see we get a little message saying leave application changes may not be saved because what we're actually doing here is not just closing down the terminal but closing down the virtual machine so it checks we really want to leave so of course we could click on leave but here I'm going to click on cancel because the other thing we can do to close down the terminal is to type exit like that which will just take us straight out and then we'll close down the window here like that so have we got LibreOffice installed hopefully we have and look yes we've now got lilux apps on the system and if I click it there are all the components of Libra office so I can launch LibreOffice writer which will run up the virtual machine and run the software inside it if you see what I mean coming up very exciting that was uh not too bad oh look it's a new install do we want tips on Startup we never ever want tips on Startup whoever wants tips on Startup we don't want the release notes either we just want to run Libra office and of course I need to type hello like that and put it into very large letters because it is as I'm sure you know in these videos the law there we are hello so we've now successfully installed and run up LibreOffice writer here in Chrome OS Flex foreign [Music] Menagerie I think we should and we can either do this graphically as I'll show you in a few minutes time but for now we'll stick with the terminal so we'll get back into that and if we go down here and click on Terminal it still doesn't do what you probably expect we don't go straight to a command line rather we get to this screen or we can do things like changing terminal settings very handy font sizes colors things like that and we also have up here an option for managing our virtual machine which again I'll show you in a few minutes time but to get straight back to the command line what we need to do is to click on penguin I rather like that and here we are back with our Linux terminal where to start with I'm going to do a sudo out install and to install the gnu image manipulation program there we go and alongside I also like to have a vector image package on the system so I'll do a sudo at install and inkscape like that and finally I think no computer should be without Solitaire so I'll type and there we are our computer is now loaded up with more software applications and I think we should check that they've actually been installed check if they work let's go up to Linux apps we've got Little Dot they're telling us we've got new bits of software and we have let's try out inkscape should come up hopefully launch the virtual machine and uh there we are that's in Escape that's for all the good and we've also got here a let's just run up the gnu image manipulation program hopefully this will work as well looks like it will that's rather good as well that's fantastic and of course we must try out solitaire that's absolutely critical and just before we do it's worth pointing out that all of the applications here like every other application on this system has got a right click menu so for example if we go to aostrop Solitaire and we go and right click on that we can uninstall if we want which will launch a Linux on installer or we can pin it to the shelf so if we go pin to shelf like that you'll see it's now pinned to the Shelf down there always good to have quick access to Solitaire and if we now run it up there we are we've got this fantastic solitaire game on this system and I don't think we need to view the toolbar there have all the space on the screen for solitaire and I think I'll even give myself more space by also hiding the Shelf oh that's marvelous so I will now test this out make sure everything's working absolutely perfectly and I'll come back to you through a graphical install oh good morning [Music] now I said it was also possible to install Linux applications here in Chrome OS Flex graphically and we can do this if we can download a Dev file and to show this I've gone to this webpage here which is a web page for veracrypt and very useful encryption utility I use it all the time and if we go across two downloads we've got downloads here for Windows and for Mac but also for Linux and we can see the Debian packages here here is a GUI package a GUI Dev file for software so let's click on that and it'll download the file there we are that was rather fast presuming not a very big file and so we'll show it in a folder like that there it is and if we go up to the file and right click you can see we've got an option to install with Linux with a little Penguin on the end just to make it exciting so we'll click on install with Linux and there we are and we just have to click on install or very nicely implemented installation process is going on down here and there we are it's finished as usual I'll just clean things up we'll close that down and go into it not by launching there we'll go back to the menu we'll also like to do that there we are new application waiting for us and there is veracrypt which we can run up like that fantastic application as I said if you want to know how to use veracrypt you can of course look in the relevant exploding Computers video now because Linux applications run in their own isolated Virtual Machine by default they don't have access to all of the same file space and drives as the rest of the Chrome OS system rather if we look down in the file manager we see that Linux access is limited to its own separate folder which is mapped to the Linux home directory however if we wish we can share other folders so for example if we want to make our photos accessible to the photo editor we installed earlier we can right click and share with lyrics and guess what we've now shared that folder with Linux and we should check if it works so we'll run up the photo editor there it is and it's coming up lovely jubbly and we can now go to file and to open we can see we have EC here which is the standard Linux file space currently nothing in it but we can also click on file system and if we then go down to mount MNT to there we go to Chrome OS and we go to my files there we are we can see photos and if we want to get back to that easily in the future here in we could just click on plus and it'll appear down there in our places list anyway let's go into photos let's go into for example London Zoo all look we've got a giraffe always good to have a giraffe let's open up a picture of a giraffe and uh there it is life's got to be good if you've got a picture of a geograph anyway let's get rid of a giraffe it might be nice but we'll say goodbye giraffe because I want to go back to show you the other virtual machine controls and the quickest way to get there is by the terminal and go to a manage for the virtual machine like that and to just open up the Linux development environment and here you can see we've got a control 4 managing shared folders we can see one is shared already we can get rid of that that type of thing if we wanted to we can do a similar thing for USB connected storage here on this computer right now there's just one device this is a Micro SD card reader I think on this machine we could share that with Linux if we wanted to we've also here got the ability to backup and restore our Linux applications and files that's rather handy we've got a facility to just port forwarding to make Linux ports available to other devices on our Network and we've also got the ability to change the amount of drive space allocated to the Linux system although for now I'll leave things as it is and then finally we can share our microphone if we wish and if we really want to we can remove the whole Linux development environment and so there we are that's hopefully a bit more useful information if you want to run Linux applications here in Chrome OS Flex four months ago I installed Chrome OS Flex on the small Celeron PC connected to my television this I use every day to watch YouTube Disney plus and other streaming content as well as web browsing accessing Google Docs and doing the final Lean Back checks on explaining computers videos and over the past four months Chrome OS Flex has performed very well indeed and has become one of my favorite operating systems in particular it boots up very quickly it's very straightforward to use it's very stable it's never crashed on me and I really like how I can shut it down with a single click of the shutdown button more broadly the ability to install local Linux applications increases the potential for Chrome OS Flex to become a major competitor to Windows and Mac OS currently it's not an operating system to run applications like high-end video editors or the latest games however for most end-user Computing activities in particular on older Hardware Chrome OS Flex is well worth considering but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed Please Subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very soon foreign [Music]

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 266,856

Keywords: ChromeOS, Chrome OS, Chrome OS Flex, Chrome OS Linux, Chrome OS Flex Linux, Chrome OS running Linux, Chrome OS Linux tutorial, Chrome OS Flex Linux tutorial, Linux in Chrome OS, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, Chrome OS LibreOffice, Chrome OS GIMP, Chrome OS solitaire, Chrome OS Flex LibreOffice, Chrome OS Flex GIMP, Chrome OS Linux file share, Chrome OS Linux file access, file share, virtual machine, Debian, GIMP, LibreOffice, Solitaire, Debian Chrome OS

Id: AsWgzH3OzYY

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2022