Windows 10 to Chrome Flex

[Tedx]

Morning all

A few news items have cropped up on my news feed this morning regarding the imminent demise of Windows 10 (well next year anyway)

If you don't have a computer that can be upgraded to Windows 11 then Google are offering their Google flex product as an alternative. They are suggesting that millions of computers can be saved from the rubbish tip or be exposed to potential hacking.

I wondered if any of the tech gurus on this website had any thoughts? (There are a few Google flex queries on this board but none specific to replacing Windows 10 that I can find)

Cheers.

[Infrasonic]

Flex isn't as 'flexible' as ChromeOS on a Chromebook/box (yet). I've had a Chromebook since 2019 - I like it.

I'd be surprised if Google will ever make it fully feature matched as they'd cannibalise their own ChromeOS business model then.

Flex is more of an easy alternative to putting a flavour of Linux onto older hardware to extend its life.

Linux is getting more user friendly all the time (e.g Linux Mint), not just for geeks any more, I'd probably lean towards that when W10 goes out of support in 2025.

I currently run my desktop PC W10 + WSL2 Ubuntu (Linux) virtualised. When W10 goes out of support I'll make Linux the default native OS.

[Tedx]

Yeah, I like Mint. I have it on a W10 mini pc with a lack of memory. It works way better than W10.

Thanks

[Infrasonic]

Yeah, I like Mint. I have it on a W10 mini pc with a lack of memory. It works way better than W10.

Thanks

You can get slimmed down versions of W10/11 with most of the bloat taken out - I wouldn't stick one on my main box though. If you don't mind experimenting on a secondary machine have a look at some of the YT tutorial videos on it. You can run W11 on older 'non compatible' machines with some install tweaks - but again not something I'd do on my main machine as it will be unsupported by MS and at some point an OS update will break the install...

[Urbandreamer]

Another fan of Linux Mint here.

Currently posting upon an old Lenovo x230 that I doubt would run Win 11.

One key issue with changing OS is the applications that you are to run. There are windows only applications and if you need to run them, and not alternatives, then you have no option.

Another issue is that there is Windows only hardware, usually sound hardware, which doesn't work well, or at all, with other OS's.

Fortunately I'm happy with alternatives to Word and am not a content creator.

Ps, Linux benefits from a huge FOS community, producing a stunning amount of applications for it.

[Infrasonic]

Linux + MS Office.

Just use MS365 (AKA Office Online) for free via a browser - cut down on features but I've never felt the need to upgrade to paid 365 yet as I don't need extended Word formatting or Excel macros.

On my Chromebook there is actually some recent potential MS integration built in so that MS 365/OneDrive will appear as default options, and the Linux container side is just on/off toggle switch based within ChromeOS settings for file access/ sharing etc. easy peasy.