So that’s what happened to NeverWare
Google has announced early access to a new version of Chrome OS called Flex, which runs on ordinary x86 hardware, offering the chance to revive older PCs or even out-of-support Macs. The year of Linux on the desktop actually arrived a few years back, but the world didn’t notice. Chromebook sales did great early last year, although they did tail off later. Sure, the numbers are dropping this year – but some 50 million customers now have quite new ones. Chrome OS is a specialised Linux distro, originally based on Gentoo, with the Aura Shell ( » ash « ). It has a fancy partitioning system with duplicate root partitions which update one another, allowing rollback of unsuccessful updates. Chrome OS is much more like a normal Linux distro than Android, but Chromebooks have their own special firmware based on coreboot. Both Chrome and Chrome OS have open-source upstreams called Chromium, meaning there is a free ChromiumOS, but despite multiple different efforts, it wasn’t easy to install on an ordinary PC. Before its acquisition, NeverWare turned this arcane process into a freemium product called CloudReady. Google acquired NeverWare in 2020, and Chrome OS Flex is the result. NeverWare enjoyed some commercial success: for instance, Nordic Choice Hotels deployed (in Swedish) CloudReady to recover from a ransomware attack. The Register spoke with the company, but it declined to be interviewed. What’s new is that this is now Google-sanctioned. As of now, Chrome OS Flex still has some limitations. Significantly, Flex can’t run Android apps, although supported hardware can run the Crostini container for full-fat local Linux apps.
