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Chromixium - a possible way of reprovisioning old hardware.

I've been playing around with Chromixium over the past few days. This is Ubuntu 14.04 modded to look and feel a lot like ChromeOS. It is possible to install actual ChromeOS on your own hardware - but its a tricky business and I've had limited success. Chromixium, being built on Ubuntu has excellent hardware support right out of the box and is relatively easy to install - taking only 10 minutes or so to be up and running. It might be an effective way of reprovisioning some old laptops...

While it looks a lot like ChromeOS - its still Ubuntu at its core. So some of the advantages of ChromeOS are not there - but on the other hand you can install local linux apps. You can easily install it as a virtual machine using VirtualBox or create a live USB boot stick if you want to give it a whirl. Brief look at it below:


And just for fun, I've booted a 9 year old Windows laptop with the USB live stick. Works really well and runs fast.

Just a shame about the battery life....

One update - if you install Chrome and set it as the default browser, then Chrome Apps such as Screencastify them work. See guide here. 



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