Can ChromeOS Flex breathe life into this 16 year old MacBook?

In today's ewaste adventure, we're going to attempt to install ChromeOS Flex on this early 2008 MacBook. Will its mechanical hard drive and measly 2GB of ram prevent it being dragged onto the modern web? Stay tuned to find out!

[@SSFighter1701]

This makes me want to pick up one of those 11.6” Macbook Airs from the early 2010s and slap ChromeOS Flex on it. I loved how tiny and sturdy they were.

[@Jrw_SB]

I'm thinking of doing this as the 11" was my favourite machine! It was a little tank!

[@akinyrf]

Get a ssd and add more ram. It will be awesome 👍🏻.

[@ColinsCity]

The 6GB Ram and SSD upgrade would definitely improve it's performance, i think the CPU is struggling due to needing actual Ram versus the swappable Ram that it uses when running out of actual Ram, it even causes issues on modern MacBooks that have base 8GB unified memory.

[@jaspercas]

plus it was running swap on the mechanical hard drive😹

[@diazpman]

Thank you very much for your video. I have a black MacBook with the same specs you mention. I bought it new in 2008 and took very good care of it until it was obsolete. I tried installing Windows 10 with Boot Camp shortly after not being able to upgrade beyond Lion but I didn't have a good user experience. Finally, I upgraded to SSD and 6GB of RAM and installed Windows 11 with Rufus and the drivers downloaded with Boot Camp achieving an excellent experience in use for basic tasks and gave it to a 12-year-old boy for his school activities with a new battery. After a year it is still working very well.

[@i3_i9]

I have a 2010 White Macbook I got for 22$ at Good Will and I put a ssd in it and upgraded it to Big Sur to see what would happen lol

[@leonidas14775]

Even with a light linux distro and enough ram, CPUs from this era absolutely struggle with video streaming. I guess that makes it a good homework machine so you're not spending time on youtube lol

[@1bit]

I have a fleet of these laptops that I’ve been using for live video work in concert and gallery settings for over a decade now

[@Than.]

Cool video can’t wait to see an upgrade for this device 😊

[@geertmuffels3572]

Nice video! I have a MacBook aluminium from 2009. Popped in 8 Gigs of RAM and a 500 GB SSD. Put Linux Mint Cinnamon 21,3 on and it now is a very agreeable laptop again. I will try to run Chrome OS Flex, see if it gets snappier....

[@RainingFroggs]

A couple days ago I upgraded my mid 2011 mac mini to Sequoia, the best I can say is it runs alright. Just it does chug, even after upgrading ram to 16gb. But hey, it does what I need it to do. Music storage and iPod sync machine. LOL

[@LoveBbyJay]

RIP the #1 macs of all time, PPC forever 💖

[@josephwhittaker2065]

This is an intel macbook, though it would be interesting to see a ChromiumOS variant for powerPC 32-bit!

[@LoveBbyJay]

@@josephwhittaker2065 the PPC macs are my all time fave, but the early gen intel Mac's are great for certain things, I'd highly recommend trying out Linux distros specifically built for the first couple generations of intel macs! You'll most likely get an overall better experience from a Linux distro built first and foremost for these early intel macs

[@ANDROIDTECHIIES]

If you want to have windows 10 on it just slap the hdd on computer and complete the setup on a bootable usb and after it restart get the drive and finished the installion on the laptop

[@matrabyte]

720p playback on youtube is crazy for an 2008 device, my first laptop from 2010 cant do 480p

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi, i have 2007 Macbook core2duo and Imac 2007 both with 4gb ram. OSX 10.6can only see 3.5g ( i think due to the strange 32/64 uefi / bios is has - that will come back to haunt you in experiments ) Both have had the hard drives backed up as they were fully loaded with software The macbook, has had HDD replaced with SSD ( brand new WD 512GB for @$25 ), it has Linux Mint 18 on it and runs great - the wifi or bluetooth just need a driver which was on the top of the FAQ for early macs. The imac has rEFInd as the dual boot manager, so i still use OSX for all tasks except youtube. There is no drawback except possibly a warning if you upgrade linux, you might over right the boot partition and have issues - but 5 years later i am still using Linux Mint V18 If the Imac was easier to change HDD/SDD i would have done it ( really apple, why not a simple rear hatch opening like laptops ad the rear of the screen ) Regards George

[@DonaldTubbs]

How does it do with TinyCore Linux?

[@biggray32703]

I am trying to install chrome os flex on a mac air mid 2017, I made it to the end of the process and I get the error (could not mount crytohome) and it said it was unable to verifly my password, but I did sign in and verified it with my phone. thank you

[@electrostuff2659]

just use macos? yr macbook air is pretty new

[@biggray32703]

support for monterey end next month for security updates thank you

[@SophiaTheGrace]

Open core​@@biggray32703

[@snorlatopus]

nice video!

[@chicken_punk_pie]

Fun stuff!

[@4ngeldus739]

Trust me Chrome on Linux is better, your CPU should be sitting at around 60% with KZbin playing. KZbin is literally my benchmark on any PC and I was literally watching video on a core2duo about 3 days ago, it'll destroy the battery life but I think the main difference OS wise is that most Linux distros still have the old Intel drivers available, even though some programs still won't run on the old CPU's like OBS, these CPU's still pack a punch but they need those integrated graphics to actually carry their weight. Your iGPU should be better than the one in my laptop as well, mine is a year older and brought I think a GMA 640 iirc

[@4ngeldus739]

It'll run better under chrome than Firefox as well, I use chromium but literally any chromium based browser runs better the Firefox right now, from my own testing specifically when watching KZbin, I'm literally here all day xD

[@bambou3715]

Chrome os aim for 20 years old hardware anyway

[@doodlememes]

Just install Linux or Windows

[@EugeniaLoli]

I checked the cpu speed, it's near 900 passmark points. That's quite fast for a machine of that time. You are limited by ram mostly, and only secondly by the hard drive. I highly suggest you start with putting another 2 GBs of RAM, to reach at least 4 (if not 6) GB. It will make the biggest difference. The ssd will also help, but not as much as adding RAM. Definitely consider adding ram. With 4/6 GB of RAM will also make something like Linux Mint with XFCE (not with Cinnamon) fly, as well.

[@the_mariocrafter]

Use Linux instead

[@Stuffedcrust_73]

Should have used Linux Mint, chrome sucks

[@danilkurylenko6988]

Если нужно что-то на слабый пк то как вариант может быть artix linux(рабочие столы xfce, lxde, lxqt) либо mx linux класическая версия. Для особо слабых ноутбуков (и intel atom + 512bm-1.5gbram) mx linux fluxbox + swap 2-4gb