Shoutout to my Thinkpad for doing so well! This was the device I both wrote my script about and on when I interviewed as a writer, before getting hired in Logistics. It’s a great little machine and I cannot recommend it more, even in 2022.
You should start posting to YT. You get a bunch of followers easily from working there. I went to subscribe and noticed you don't have any content. Just a thought
The X230 is actually still an extraordinarily popular model among Thinkpad enthusiasts for a variety of reasons, so I'm not at all shocked it did so well here. (I always opted for larger models myself, so I never owned one, but they're recommended so often by folks looking for low-cost reliable computers and considering older Thinkpads that it's hard to avoid.)
@@marianoalvarez6467 we only have one life, and i think we should try diffrent things instead of sticking to one particular thing or brand for whole life. Macbooks also have many things to offer which is worth giving a try rather than becoming a ThinkPad only or macbook only guy for whole life
I was hoping they would do this as well. Lightweight distros have been shown time and time again to breathe new life into old machines with the only issue typically being the battery life can be poor depending on the make and model.
Here you go :) In my personal experience, when running antix only some things were faster, like opening certain apps and loading webpages, but it's not worth it. Chrome os is easier to use, has more features and is overall faster than antix, linux mint (cinnamon, xfce and mate), kali linux and pop! os didn't even run. The only downside that wasn't mentioned in the video, is on some systems the boot time is stupid slow compared to linux (~12 seconds linux and 1:30 minutes chrome os.) After spending a stupid amount of time tinkering, if you are a diehard "more fps" fan, go for antix. But if you don't mind loosing a bit of performance for WAY more comfort and overall snappiness go for Chrome os flex. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes, English is not my first language. Thank you for the time!
That's like comparing Usain Bolt to an anemic child with Leukemia and a mental disability in a 100m sprint. Practically ANY Linux distro will absolutely and utterly DESTROY any OS on old machines. The Linux Kernel is so efficient, it can literally run on a toaster. Like what do they expect to see here? Like, a fully usable Gentoo system can use as little as 64mb of RAM, install a DE and you won't even break 200mb of RAM usage. Linux still remains the undefeated king when it comes to old Laptops. And while antiX is a solid recommendation, Lubuntu is not.
Can we all give the ThinkPad a round of applause for being so solid and useable after 10 years? Edit: Do NOT buy Crucial BX SSDs as linked below in the description unless you are on a really tight budget. They have no DRAM cache so suck with sustained reads and writes, as well as having poor endurance. The MX500 lineup is much better.
@@NemouseJurado The Crucial MX drives are solid for performance per dollar, but not great for endurance. Absolutely fine for average laptop use though. Samsung, Seagate and SK Hynix make some great drives if you want to spash the cash.
TBH I've always found switching to an SSD does do quite a lot for an older computer but another thing that works well in conjunction with that upgrade is to also upgrade the ram. Older laptops generally have upgradable ram and even if it's only a 2GB jump it still helps quite a lot
I’ve put chrome OS flex on a crappy old laptop. It definitely made it much more usable, though after sustained use it seems to struggle. I tried lubuntu and other light Linux distros first, but chrome OS was much more usable
Will my old picture’s be transferred over to the new chrome flex or do I need to back it up to save them first Trying to upgrade parents windows VISTA on a dell LOL
Honestly the Thinkpad was the star of the show. As they said, change the HD to a SSD and buy a replacement battery and you've got a great web browsing and doc writing machine. Here in the UK I see them starting around £120. Brilliant robust school work machine.
That's definitely a good solution. Love those machines. I have ADHD so it's better to have a Chromebook or Brunch modded Laptop since I can't do much but work on it. It's better to not have the ability to do other things at all rather than using a PC and attempting to stop myself from doing other things.
oh yeah! and where Thinkpads were sold in such large quantities compared to many other laptops you could get in that price range, if the battery life isnt cutting it for you, there are TONS of vendors still selling new batteries you can replace it with! and where up until around 2016 iirc all the batteries were external, it makes it very friendly for non-techy people to replace them without having to tear the machine apart!
If you want to do just a bit more with them install a good stable Linux distro like Solus w/Budgie DE that's simirolling meaning it's a one time install, it updates once things are vetted, and verified to work, and not like Arch that pushes out the updates soon as they get released, and not like Debian based that can take ages to update. But yep an SSD upgrade, and even a RAM upgrade to an old machine if possible, are 2 of the best thing you can do to get them ready for Linux, or Chrome OS Flex.
Additionally, unlike new X-Series Thinkpads, the one in question was meant to just be a lightweight, battery efficient web browser and doc writer even when new. And since dual cores are still usable for that purpose, it can easily fulfill that role while feeling better built than the flimsy chromebooks or celeron thinbooks of today.
I spent $36 to upgrade my in-laws 3-4yr old laptop to a 500gb ssd and the difference is mind blowing. It was almost unusable before and now it feels just like a new computer for light tasks (which is all they did anyway). It’s so aggravating how long oem’s stuck to spinning drives, and you have to wonder how many people bought new computers because they didn’t realize all they needed was an ssd.
That’s because HDDs are still less expensive than SSDs. Literally, a new HDD at 2TB is 50, while a low tier SSD could be $110, with it being really lucky if you find a 1TB version in stock for that price
@@DipJyotiDeka Trust me, I know. When I built my first PC I used a 2TB mechanical drive I had laying around. Took around 5 minutes to get to the login screen, and another 5 to open a browser. The SSD I got was the best $100 I had spent up to that point. My laptop has an nvme SSD in it and it's significantly faster to boot. I could never go back to an HDD.
Been using SSDs since 2012 and ever since, I've been a HUGE advocator for using an SSD on EVERYTHING possible, from my dad's 2007 HP PC to my sister's HP Netbook (remember those?), even a cheapo SSD can bring a seemingly "dead" laptop back to life, it's INSANE.
I booted ChromeOS Flex off my Lenovo Ideapad 5 Flex via a USB flash drive just for fun, and it's actually a nice looking OS. I've never owned a Chromebook, only used one for school for a few years. It's refreshing to mess around with a new OS, but sucks you can't install Android apps on it. I'm not 100% confident I could set up Brunch Framework for that (it's a lot of steps), but I might in the future. Otherwise, it works with most of my laptop's hardware, just not the fingerprint sensor as far as I know, and the function buttons for brightness, volume, ect. are kinda funky. Nice to have, honestly.
@@ShimmyAkira There isn't necessarily anything like "Properties" on Chrome OS Flex like there is on Windows. Closest there is on Flex is "Get info", which only shows you very few lines of info about the file, and it doesn't seem like you can change file properties. There may be one like Windows properties if your device is using the native Chrome OS on a Chromebook rather than running on Chrome OS Flex for non-Chromebook devices. I doubt it, though. Chrome OS is very barebones and very closed in letting users do much with the OS.
I didn't hear mention of it in the video, but there is one more performance-oriented oddity with ChromeOS to consider. If you have (I believe) a Skylake or older CPU in your device, ChromeOS disables hyper-threading by default as a way to alleviate a known hardware security flaw in those CPUs. You can re-enable it in the chrome-flags page by changing the setting and rebooting. This may change some of the performance benchmark \ battery life scores in the tests quite a bit, assuming the devices are HT capable.
I was skeptical when I saw Bush's Baked Beans listed as an SSD option, but once I tried it out, I canned my old hard drive. The performance wasn't perfect straight from the tin, but after a night of updates, it really sprouted and the performance gains grew incredibly fast.
Wouldn't a better test have been to compare a fresh install of ChromeOS on these devices vs. a fresh install of their original OSs? I mean who knows what kind of bloat or malware found its way onto these old machines while they were being used. Reinstalling any fresh OS would get rid of all that.
I can definitely confirm the SSD upgrade makes a world of difference. Recently wanted to throw away my mom's old computer since it runs like garbage, checked the specs to see why it ran so poorly, and noticed it had a perfectly good i5-4400 in it. It was just paired with 4GB RAM and a hard drive. Upgraded to a nice 16 gig kit and a zippy SSD, and wham bam, it's like a new machine! My mom uses it for work and we have some security cameras, I installed the program to peek into the cameras, but she never ended up using it because it just made the whole thing slow down to a crawl. After the upgrade, it could easily handle twenty Firefox tabs, basic image editor, remote desktop connection, and the camera software at the same time. It really is like a new machine now. She's super happy with it :) It's like I bought her a whole new computer for 120 bucks.
I did the same with an old Dell 1st Gen i5 or i7 (like it makes a difference it's that old). SSD, Ram and battery upgrade and it's like a new computer.
I hate to break it to you but the ram upgrade is the only thing that mattered. The hard drive won't be an issue once you get going (for light users anyways). So even the SSD isn't necessary. For people that just browse the web they barely need anything aside from 8gb of ram. Pretty much everyone in my family has an old laptop so I know the limits of old machines.
@@flameshana9 sorry but that's just wrong. The main complaint from both tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy is always "it just runs so slow" and that's primarily about how long it takes to boot up, and then how long it takes for programs to open. Both my gf's and my mum's laptops would take 5+ minutes to turn on and open a browser. My gf in particular never used hers because it was so bad (and windows updates would genuinely be left overnight and still be going in the morning). My mum was wanting to buy another new laptop. I bet with them both that if they each spent £30 on a 500gb Crucial MX500 for me to swap into their laptops, and if they couldn't describe the improvement as "monumental" then I would buy the SSDs from them for my pc. Neither of them would give up the SSDs.
@@flameshana9 I can vouch that SSD actually mattered more than RAM in most instances. I have a 9 y/o laptop, and on year 6-7 or so it was so slow I can barely do anything with it without frustration. swapped the HDD to SSD, then swapped the DVD Drive to the HDD. basically ran like new after that. didn't touch the ram at all (8GB) still using the machine to this day
@@joeltaylor7741 An SSD is always a good upgrade, but you said that a program made it slow to a halt. The cpu/gpu didn't change, so having a faster drive doesn't suddenly make you able to run programs when you couldn't before. Only the ram can do that. When something is slow to start up that's the drive. But when you can't run several things at once that's ram.
I finally updated my HDD to a SSD a while back. The change in speed was more than I thought. It makes such a big difference for not a big price. Depending on the size obviously.
@@koilamaoh4238 china's SSD have a big problem. They using old 3D TLC process. The cells will degrade very fast on writing, also you can see it on a small-space, like 64\128gig. But your purpose is just to setup a fast internet-browsing machine - it's cheap and nice option
If you have a model with a CD-ROM drive, you can buy an HDD tray that will replace your CD-ROM drive with your existing HDD. This way you can get a small SSD, and use your existing HDD for your larger applications. Another perk is that you dont have to back up your data from your HDD to your SSD, since it's already there.
@@DrenImeraj Yea thats fine with PCs, fairly basic. Most laptops now a days dont even have that cdrom anymore, unless its old; as cdrom drives are a dying tech, no one cares for them. I barely even use my BD-r drive.
@@nikostalk5730 so thats why my pc somehow works even slower than any hdd yes it loads faster but everytime i right click an app, it took literally a minute just to pop up a menu action
I still use my 15-year old Acer Extensa 5220 after upgrading the cpu from a Celeron 530 to a Core2 Duo T7700, ram from 512mb to 3gb, 120gb HDD to 120gb SSD, windows 7 from windows XP and it's still perfectly useable for basic tasks. I spend maybe $20 in total for the upgrades.
Same, I found a comically large chonker of a laptop in the waste bin, Acer 7730Z. It was made for Windows Vista once but now runs a Core 2 Extreme X7900, 4 GB ram and 120 GB ssd and ZorinOS installed! Runs great
I had an Hp laptop with an i3 6006u and 4 gb of ram and an hdd ... installed linux mint went faster but not to the degree i would like and then opened it up and changed the hdd with an ssd and the difference is huge . Just change your hard drive and install something lite like linux .
A video where Linus goes over different benchmark programs to run on your own system at home would be cool. Diving more into the meanings of the results and tips on things you can do without just upgrading components to better your performance. As always love these videos you guys put out.
Get pretty easy better performance with (probably clean windows install, but who cares) Overclocking combined with undervoling. At least that's my opinion, would be stoked to hear someone else's
@@rubindublone5932 I'd also love a video on the basics of overclocking from Linus. There's lots of videos out there but i trust what they put out more in their videos lol.
i love how one of the probationary employees got out of his probation and instantly first thing is acting like a cheerleeder with other known members of LTT really adds character and gets them used to this
@@VeraTR909 yeah i feel like their way of being themselves while being able to work at their full potential while the vibe they have kinda helps you with confidence, I mean just look at denis, or any other staff for that matter on their first videos ( except dan 😏 he got instantly used to it and first moment he showed up he had like the whole confidence in the builsing acquired) and their videos now !
@@knightwolf3511 I think he said once on WAN show that the probation is a legal requirement in Canada. I think they just keep those people off camera though to kinda cover their butts if that person doesn't work out, or something like that.
@@knightwolf3511 Probation is actually a legal requirement in Canada. And it doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. That, for a few months, both employer and employee can try each other out and, during probation, either party can ask for a "no fault" divorce. Not just that the employer can see if the employee is any good before properly hiring them, but it also works the other way, in that employees can also call it off with "no fault", if they discover that it really doesn't work for them either. Like, check that the "marriage" is going to work out for both sides, before actually walking down the aisle and saying "I do". It seems like a good idea to me, so I don't know why other countries don't also have this too.
It's something of a hassle to get Brunch configured but, once you do, it's pretty easy going. Do note that you do have to manually update Chrome from a repo if you're using Brunch, though (or at least you did when I was last using a machine running Brunch).
cool video, but I definitely would have liked to see how the "chromebooks" faired vs running Linux as that would be the more path for an older computer.
depends on what you need. You cant use the play store, so all you get is a simple file storage system to manage your data, and a browser. With linux, you can at least install apps/games
Just a note. They bought a company called neverware that made a distro of chromium OS (the open source version that the proprietary version is based on just like the web browser) called cloudready with some proprietary bits added in minus somethings like android app support. It's been around for ages but google swept in bought them and rebranded it as chrome OS flex
Yup, they didn't quite "release the OS for everyone to use", they bought an existing modified version. It's a kind of neat product though, and if we're lucky it'll get better support by Google than Neverware. If we're unlucky they'll kill it within the year lol
I'd love to see this done with linux mint or some other easy, user friendly linux distro. Chrome os is too limiting but a good linus distro is actually versatile.
that would be what I would want to try.. that being said- the last 5 times I actually tried that, I didn't get very far. There a some things I never get running correctly on laptops with linux: - GPU drivers.. I never had full support with my hardware- making it slower than it should be - all the laptop specific stuff like FN keys, volume knobs, media keys, brightness control... never worked fully - I don't know a lot about linux- so using it and installing stuff means googeling way too much and then ctrl+v isn't even paste... - there are way too many different linux versions.. so you have to google your ass off even before you can install anything.. - printers.. never found a working driver for any of my printers in linux.. I do have to print stuff - alternatives for the Windows software I use... are not easy to find - stability... linux is supposed to be stable.. but I had a lot of crashes
I was of the same idea. I was pretty confused at how everything they described fit exactly into how a good Linux Mint works. I've managed to revive and use about five old laptops and one old desktop solely using Linux Mint.
@@olik136 As @Freak says, try Linux Mint. As you can see in the Linus and Luke Linux gaming challenge, parts of Linux do have the problems you describe, but Linux also has support for things you'd never guess. My old Dell Inspiron laptop had a Windows-unsupported wireless card that caused crashes. After putting Mint on it, the system not only worked better, but the wireless card was usable again.
@@olik136 The printer thing is super weird. I've always had printers just work with no fiddling. It's often easier than using windows, at least in that regard, than windows. If you really get stuck most manudactures have drivers you can find Edit: The functio keys can be fixed if the manufacturer has linux drivers, if not there are plenty of programs than can allow the same functionality . There is a learning curve to linux but it isn't too difficult if you're reasonably tech literate and stick to distros like mint or pop.
@keithsze001 That is mostly nvidias fault. AMD opensourced their drivers so their drivers are often better on linux than windows. Nvidia has kept all their drivers super closed source and they havn't teally put enough work in for the first part options to be great. Some of this should be resolved relatively soon though. Nvidia is open sourcing a couple key parts of their drivers
Chromebook = specifically for internet/surf. Technically not spec'd for video and gaming. The manuals in most models tell you not to game on them. If you just want something to read email, there ya go.. for $30, a chromebook ain't bad for reading posts.
Love the video, but a couple things to consider. -the mm size is not the only thing you need to consider when getting a new m.2 drive. SATA m.2 and NVMe m.2 slots are not comparable with eachother, make sure you know what you need. Also, some older/cheaper Chromebooks may use eMMC/mini PCIe storage instead. -the screw is the firmware write protect screw. It prevents the firmware from being changed, or custom firmware being written, among other things. This may not always be a screw, sometimes it is the battery, a switch, or cr50 that can be removed with a special cable (SuzyQ). You don’t need to put the screw back, but you can for security purposes.
I dont feel thats a fair comparison if you look at how easy it is to use chrome os for windows users. Way less problems probably. but if you just mean for comparison, might be interesting
I think the test would be way more interesting if he also compared an old with a fresh install of Win10 (which one did he use?) as well as also tested Lubuntu to at least offer a baseline for Debian Linux systems as an alternative.
But why test it against something like Lubuntu, when any Ubuntu version is kind of notorious for their bloat? This just goes to show: LTT _needs_ some more staff that can use Linux, not just Anthony. There's hundreds of great, blazing fast, light weight distros out there apart from Lubuntu which isn't even one of the most popular choices.
@@Finkelfunk Well, people call the snap packages bloat which is true to a point, but usually comfort functions and nice animations equal "bloat", and Lubuntu already lacks a bunch of them. I mean he did mention AntiX but that's certainly not as modern and easy as a any Ubuntu. Then there's Fedora but being cutting edge is pointless on old hardware. Let's not even start with Arch. You have to keep in mind that the people using those machines most likely wouldn't be enthusiasts, even minor details like the rock solid translations of the UI in Ubuntu may matter.
@@Finkelfunk I don't know if you tried lubuntu but except from snapd lubuntu should be pretty well optimized. Ps. I wonder how lubuntu compares to fedora lxqt spin
@@Alias_Anybody The enthusiast point is the most important one here. But people always assume that it's rocket science to install an operating system when it's really not, most of the time you just follow instructions on a wiki. Comfort functions don't necessarily mean bloat, bloat is anything that is installed but serves little to no purpose for the task at hand as well as unclean code bases. That being said: I personally haven't driven Lubuntu, but I've tested Ubuntu and I'm not a big fan of Canonical. Also I personally believe Arch is actually a VERY good variant especially for low spec PCs since it is a suckless distro which means lightning fast, lightweight, responsive and flexible with no bullsh*t attached. I know bleeding edge is not for everybody, but that is my first choice for old laptops. Combine that with a Lightweight DE or if you feel fancy use KDE, with a few tweaks the performance hit is still rather minimal and the system runs fast and reliable.
@@Finkelfunk Anything that's not preconfigured is a burden during setup. Not an issue for people who know what to do and how to do backups, but for the masses it has to be idiot proof and quick to reinstall. Even without a wiki. Base isn't that important as long as browser, office and file manager are there and ready.
LTT, this is really great content. I'm getting on a bit now after a career in electronics and I.T. since the early 90's, and I try to avoid sitting in front of a computer screen as much as possible nowadays, but this subject drew me in... as have other LTT vids that CZcams has suggested to me in recent months. Just wanted to say great work... and that's coming from a cynical former techie turned tech-avoider.
Here's something I find really sad: I work in IT, and the techs that work at one of our other sites are convinced that a SSD does not improve performance. So while my site has been happily upgrading computers consistently over the past two years, that team is struggling to figure out why MS Teams slows down their computers so much.
The biggest problem they have is shit battery life, which is kind of a deal breaker when you consider they're laptops. My old Thinkpad T430 lasts a whole 5 minutes off of the plug. Literally.
13:05: Just FYI for those that don't know, Chromebooks are a terrible choice of machine to give to a child. The feature that is supposed to track and limit how much time they spend using it ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT WORK. The only time limit that works is setting a bedtime at which they will no longer be able to use it anymore for the day (say 8pm). So if your plan is to give your kid a laptop that will say only allow them to do 1 or 2 hours of games or social media per day but they can have several hours of use to do their homework or educational apps, ChromeOS does not do this. It claims it does, it has settings to set this up, but they simply do not work at all. The kid can be playing games for hours and Chrome reports no usage.
@@brydonthunder Well, I guess it must be working for somebody or they couldn't have it on the market. But it isn't working for a LOT of people - if you look at the support forums you'll see a lot of open issues like I am experiencing that have never been resolved.
@@moonpiedumplings3059 Too young to figure out how to do that, and only has pretty much average computer and tech capabilities. So if it is something my child figured out how to do then Google really seriously dropped the ball and its just the same as if the features just don't work.
@@andrewawakened628 How young? I'm on a discord server (no I will not share the link) where I am witnessing middle schoolers finding exploits worth actual money, and then distributing them for the purpose of unblocking things.
Can we talk about how great that ThinkPad was running both before and after getting chrome OS. I bought a second hand 2011 x220 a few years ago for my computer science degree at uni of all things. With a £20 SSD it still runs like a dream, particularly with Ubuntu
I had a feeling this follow up was gonna happen after Linus bought a Chromebook for his son a while back. Also, David was killing it with the cheerleading intro.
My favorite feature is ChromeOS Flex's ability to restore each user's Desktop to any ChromeOS computer logged into. I've had my drive crash once in the middle of the work day. I reinstalled ChromeOS to a blank drive, logged in, and I was up and running in about 30 minutes. I now keep a spare ChromeOS laptop available for situations like this. My primary ChromeOS computer is an old iMac. 👍🏽
Honestly Chrome OS Flex is just the Chrome OS I used back in 2015 in college - back before the linux container or android apps on chrome were even a thing ( I had a cheap $100 chromebook back then). Running it on any fairly modern machine if all you do is stream, type up a few docs etc is honestly just as good of an experience as it was then. Its not for gaming, video editing or heavy lifting - just the basics.
I have ADHD so it's better to have a Chromebook since I can't do much but WORK on it. It's better to not have the ability to do other things at all rather than using a PC and attempting to stop myself from doing other things.
I used a chromebook all throughout college. Did run into annoyance towards the end, but having a very thin ARM laptop that ran a mostly modern OS and had a solid 10 hour battery life easily outweighed any cons in 2015 for only $250
Obviously late here, but I always figured that if less OS overhead was the goal on a lower end (older maybe) pc, I thought Linux would always be the 1st option, especially cause Google is data collection numero uno
Except desktop Linux is a pain in the a** and seemingly has little to no speed advantage. The reason for it's image as being such a great os seems to be largely due to condescending and even aggressive people that have spent a huge amount of time learning how to use it. They'll respond to basic issues with 'you only need to ' and proceed to list multiple command line instructions. I had Windows 7 on an old Core Duo laptop with lots of battery life left, worked great, but as I had no use for it I installed (Manjaro)Linux. What a shambles, Linux even managed to annihilate the battery by constantly spinning up the hdd - even when manually put to sleep, it would wake up immediately when it was not being used at all. It was also faster on Windows, despite the thin Linux installation. Never mind the terrible, random interface, overlapping settings apps, basic stuff that doesn't work, repeated requirements due to issue command line instructions, flat battery(I wonder why) during an update making it unbootable (I had to use command line instructions to repair it), etc. I haven't even found it to be more stable, though the os itself is clearly better than all the apps you have to use in it. I've tried multiple desktop Linux variants over the years, but have found them universally pointless except where the use is very specific and restrained - such as my htpc on a thin client, which uses little more than a browser. Albeit the only real advantage of Linux then is being relatively secure, smaller, and can boot off usb into ram(for puppy linux, which I use) if wanted. Even that had problems though, I had to manually edit things just to get sound out of hdmi & analog via 3.5mm at the same time. Settings, apps, etc are also still scattered and utterly inconsistent, it just doesn't matter so much with this use. ie: it all adds up with how Linux is overwhelmingly used, in specific and/or controlled builds(by specialists) for specific uses - Android phones/tablets/TVs, servers, routers, etc.
@@DoubleMonoLR Def see where you're coming from, I had a Linux class in high school, so I got to sit with it in a controlled environment for 2 yrs. That being said, I'm curious what specific distributions you've used? From the experiences you've stated, it seems like you've gone after more specialized builds (manjaro aside), rather than more mainstream options. For example, if you're open to it, I'd like to recommend Zorin OS, it's a small offshoot of Ubuntu, that is designed with Windows users in mind, in that, the desktop environment is built to look as similar to windows as possible and interactions with said environment are built to feel similar to that of Windows. Just a thought, as I obviously don't know the full extent of your experience, and I've had nothing but a good time with Zorin.
@@DoubleMonoLR My experience was more or less the same say 5 years ago, but I'm currently on Fedora and it's been really smooth, general performance has been better than Windows but gaming has been hit and miss. As for battery, on my Dell E6440 it's a little less than on Windows, (around 30 minutes less) on my Thinkpad it's at least 1 hour more, and on my Huawei laptop it's the same as Windows. Keep in mind that on a clean install, Linux would totally suck out the life of that poor battery but TLP improved that drastically (I wish it was the default on distros, but sadly it isnt). As for a really old laptop, my acer aspire one (with GMA 965? iirc graphics and an old intel Atom, and a 5600RPM HDD), Windows just barely functions. Yes, Windows 10 installs, but other than that it's plain unusable. Heck, even Minecraft doesn't run because Windows only has OpenGL 1.4 support but Linux has OpenGL 2.1, which can run up to minecraft 1.12 i think. Perf was abysmal ofc, but hey it runs i guess. Audio issues are the same story, used to be really bad but has been very good with pipewire. Nothing to say here really, pipewire is just a massive step up, and yes audio on linux was horrible before it and pulse. but now its good. Finally, distro choice. I can't blame you for choosing it, but manjaro is kinda terrible. Distros generally don't matter, but manjaro is "special" to put it in a way. Chris titus' opinion on linux distros is more or less the same as mine, so feel free to check out his video on the topic (and his channel in general, makes good content, albeit a little clickbaity at times)
Curious how Brunch compares. I think Google is targeting exclusively the list of supported models and making sure they are totally rock solid rather than making merely any computer work "ok" and as fast as possible, because it's intended for enterprise and schools with older computers rather than enthusiasts. Ive run Flex's predecessor on ThinkPads myself and it works quite nicely tho. I think the main lesson here is literally just getting an SSD and more RAM is a huge upgrade for any old computer regardless of what it's running.
Brunch Framework works amazingly well on my old laptop with an SSD. Like battery life was about half an hour on Windows for example, and now I can watch a whole movie in bed without plugging it in. Watching videos in Full HD in general was not really possible on Windows with that laptop, now it is no problem, even with a bunch of tabs open.
Would be interesting to see what ChromeOS does against a fresh Windows install too, assuming the original data was from the existing installs. Great content!
One part of this is inaccurate. Chrome OS Flex DOES give access to the linux shell. I use it frequently. And hence there are plenty of non web apps that can be used (eg Libre Office).
Honestly I really like my little $100 Lenovo Flex 3 chromebook or whatever the hell it’s called. Google suite of apps, mainly docs, very nice and useful. Works perfectly fine for browsing and 4k video playback with display out available. Came with a responsive touch screen that can be awesome to switch back and forth from while working. Works perfectly fine for cloud gaming, the display looks just fine. Runs emulation from PS1 down very well with few exceptions Super lightweight and size is decent in terms of portability without build quality feeling cheap. I feel like they catch too much hate to be honest. Some of it is deserved but for an easy, stable, somewhat fast out of the box experience it does about everything it needs to quite well for the awesome low costs they usually come with
And for the privacy freaks that hate google out there… I actually feel you. I run a pixel with grapheneOS and I usually even leave Orbot running on it too. I have USBs with Tails sitting around and do certain sensitive tasks in a VM regularly. But I also don’t mind selling my soul to be able to do normal things that de-googled and Linux devices are simply not well-capable of…. Like ease of use, fluid gaming, banking apps, etc…. Which is the same reason I also have the new iPhone every year.
To be honest I would go for some linux distro over Chrome OS... My dad uses ubuntu mate on his PC from 2005( it's still usable for light web browsing but not much else) but Linux has much better driver support and you only need etcher or Rufus to install it. My old Thinkpad from 2013 is still going strong with windows so no need to change it there.
Seconded this! Too and that ltt team wouldn't test or compare Linux vs windows vs chrome os. That would be really interesting. Also rocking x220t for some programming/development workloads and this is still a pretty solid machine.
My main browsing/youtube laptop is a 2012 Macbook Pro with Ubuntu installed onto an upgrade to SSD with a RAM increase (from 8 to 16 GB). It actually took a hit on battery life too even with the SSD, but took boot times from 3.5 minutes to circa 30 seconds. Macbooks are the only laptops I have never had to replace screen hinges on, so whilst I do miss the Delete key it is one of the most maintainable kickaround laptops I have ever used. Bonus, I get to play Seven Kingdoms again due to it being one of the games you can install, which was one of the first games I ever bought for myself!
Owned a Chromebook for over 6 years. Long story short... Linus is right. Edit: I'm not speaking for everyone. As a normal everyday computer to serve the standard purpose a laptop should serve, Chromebooks are king. For people like me who wish for those exclusive features, any other OS is for the best.
@@alexrogers777 Basically Chrome OS comes with so many limitations, especially on behalf of their actual Chromebooks themselves, and Linus had touched on that concept in this video so it just reinforces the frustrations of my experience with a Chromebook personally
Brunch ChromeOS is great, the kernels/options out of the box don't work with as much hardware (Camera,GPS,LTE) as standard linux distros. But, there are 4 kernels to choose from and the developer (Sebanc)really seems dedicated to adding patches for common issues. Brunch, is also a heck of a lot more stable than every androidx86 I've tried. I've left it running for days without charging and it enters/exits sleep state with no prob. The one major downside I find is a bad update (default disabled) or glitch could prompt you to powerwash (factory reset) with no easy/direct way to retrieve your data. It's great for people with moderate pc experience who are somewhat comfortable following linux based directions. (I'm bad with linux and managed) However, I would not recommend throwing it on the laptop of a non-tech savy person who may store crucial data on it.
I've got a T440p with an SSD, CD drive replaced with an HDD port, Quad core i7 CPU with 16GB of ram. Also some cruddy integrated graphics. It's a beast and I'm surprised at how fast it is.
@@MrKillswitch88 Yeah, sadly mine doesn't have the GT730M GPU. It instead has Intel 4600HD Graphics that can do some light gaming. In order to get the best performance out of the integrated GPU, you have to keep the laptop plugged in which is rather annoying and if you don't, you get stutters
We purchased a $150 Chromebook form my mother in law, She loved it and used it everyday till she passed away. The upside, I didn't have to clean off all the viruses and garbage she downloaded. It made visits more enjoyable. She was not the most computer literate person but she was sharp and aware till she passed away. I miss her till this day.
You said that you didn't have time to spend on it but I just spent an evening setting it up on a Yoga L13 (gen 1) and can say quite confidently that Brunch is INCREDIBLE, *and* you can dual boot with it with no fear of disk wipes. Touch works, screen orientation works. For something that feels like as much of an awesome computer crime as a Hackintosh, I'm astounded how simple it was to set up. The only issue I had was that I didn't have UEFI and GPT set up for Windows 10, so you'll need to do that first to get booting to work properly with grub for windows; I'd had legacy boot enabled so W10 installed with MBR and Grub for Windows installed in BIOS mode, and so booting failed. I still can't believe how easily it worked
Brunch worked great for us on an older MSI gaming laptop (budget-ish model) until an update to the OS broke it and we ended up trying Chrome OS Flex after for stability on a more official channel and it's been fine ever since. RIP to the terminal and play store but hey, it's faster and snappier than ever before. Not to mention those insane boot times.
5:11 if you are wondering why the MacBook Pro lasted longer it is because of macOS. macOS optimises the battery and power consumption depending on its percentage unlike other laptops that run windows 10. It’s also the reason why all MacBooks old or new have longer lasting batteries than most modern windows laptops
I'd like to see something similar to this, but comparing windows/chromeOS/Linux on some older hardware. It'd be interesting to see how much the user experience changes and if all the hype about breathing new life is correct.
Here you go :) In my personal experience, when running antix (a literal 500mb linux distro lol) only some things were faster, like opening certain apps and loading webpages, but it's not worth it. Chrome os is easier to use, has more features and is overall faster than antix, linux mint (cinnamon, xfce and mate), kali linux and pop! os didn't even run. The only downside that wasn't mentioned in the video, is on some systems the boot time is stupid slow compared to linux (~12 seconds linux and 1:30 minutes chrome os.) After spending a stupid amount of time tinkering, if you are a diehard "more fps" fan, go for antix. But if you don't mind loosing a bit of performance for WAY more comfort and overall snappiness go for Chrome os flex. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes, English is not my first language.
The best use I got from a Chromebook was flashing Coreboot on it and installing a Linux distro (like Fedora with Suckless DWM). They’re otherwise useless, especially if Google drops software support.
They're useless for the LTT tech savvy crowd but for absolute noobs who don't care and don't know anything about computers (especially older people) it's a really good option and the built-in Google integration is of value.
@@SaHaRaSquad MX Linux is the true Windows replacement for Windows power users. Stopped distro-hopping once I discovered it and I can't say enough good things about it. AntiX is more for much older computers. It's insanely light, but it's gonna be missing a few quality-of-life features as a result. Q4OS might be pretty interesting as well since it's definitely the most Windows-XP-like distro of them all. Even has a full XP theme for it for Trinity.
12:40 It's just Google being incompetent again, making a decision that makes absolutely zero sense from even financial perspective is pretty standard at this point.
Using Brunch on an old 2--in-1 from 2015. It's great. Battery life went from 4-5 hours to around 7. Initially. Battery age has reduced that back somewhat, but I dread to think what the battery life would be in Windows at this point. Linux apps have me covered for tasks like development and simple image editing. I mostly use the android apps for stuff like the android versions of Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate etc. Overall happy with it, and Linux applications work surprisingly well.
I installed brunch on my 2018 hp that power throttles. That little laptop ran every OS from windows 10, 11, Ubuntu, ChromeOS to macOS. Just remember to install the brunch image inside a ext4 partition instead of FAT32, massive performance difference when updating. Chrome os ran really well but battery life is best among all the OS unless I manually choose the governor on Linux. Browser performance is best on Chrome OS. The Android apps are snappier than equivalent on windows or macOS. Linux apps work well enough to get the job done, but the GUI does feel "virtualized" like parallels on mac. Terminal applications are at full speed, the same level as WSL on windows.
its wild that the thinkpad did as well as it did! ive been a big advocate for getting a used thinkpad (though newer than the x220) over a brand new laptop in the 100-300$ price range for a while. Their build quality for the X, T, W, and P lines are amazing, and if the battery is dead after all these years, they tend to be super easy to find cheap new replacements for on places like ebay sense these machines sold in such large quantities to business customers (as well as cheap replacement parts) I have a T540p and a T580 which is my daily driver when i need a laptop. was able to swap out the trackpad and battery real easy, upgrade the ram, and have a super solid laptop for about 650$ CAD all in.
Same... but for windows 10, my recommendation is the one that using 4th Gen Intel or newer (like T440, X240 or E440) i5 or i7, 8GB RAM and SSD storage... That good enough for daily light office work and web browsing
My friend still uses my old ThinkPad twist. It had a few issues but the power level of it is still awesome. You mention swapping the battery and doing it on the twist would be harder than find some older devices where you just pull the two tabs in the battery falls out. My friend says he gets about an hour hour and a half of battery life and he mostly plugs into the wall anyways. The fan did die on it once and we had to replace it. The only other weird thing that happened was that the device stopped working if a hard drive was plugged in. That's how I found out that it also has an msata drive. No idea why it stopped booting with any drive plugged into the SATA port but We got a 128 gig msided drive and away he went. We actually had windows installed on the 24 GB msata drive that originally came with the machine but having to have a thumb drive plugged in the entire time is pretty annoying.
@@clydefrosch well there are newer thinkpads than an x220. my roommate just got a T480 for about 300$ iirc and thats a laptop from 2018 shich has a great screen anx upgradability
On a Chromebook right now. 32GB of RAM, 4 core CPU. I'm a professional software developer and it's the best experience I have. I make use of separate profiles for isolation, I make use of the Linux env for development. I would suggest checking out that Linux environment - there are plenty of benchmarking tools that you could use in it. It seems a bit wrong to say "don't buy a Chromebook" instead of "don't install ChromeOS on an unofficial laptop". Also notably ChromeOS's browser: a) Lags behind the main version by ~3 weeks b) Is not strictly the same as a native install. For that you'll need Lacros, which is not released yet. I also found some of the benchmarks to be not very compelling. These results are largely within noise range - 1.41 vs 1.28 is a difference I'd be just as likely to attribute to a tiny temperature gap or a minor v8 update.
Thanks to this video, I have (somewhat) successfully turned my Lenovo Flex 15 into a Chromebook. It came with Windows 10, I took the risk of upgrading it to Windows 11 and subsequently accidentally leaving less than 15 GB on my hard drive. Needless to say my laptop didn't like this and would stay functional for about 5 minutes before recovery mode kicked in. I bought a new laptop and relegated this one to the basement. After a few months of hibernation, it seemed to be doing better, but chrome truly breathed new life into it. It has now become my parents' choice laptop for streaming to their TV (a high honour), and I think it will become my go-to "light work" laptop.
I can't help but notice you marked Jamie's ThinkPad as an X220 at 11:15, when it is in fact an X230, it's both on the bezel, and instantly noticeable by the, subjectively speaking, worse keyboard it also has... Along with the I/O being slightly different. With all this, Jamie himself also refers to it as an X230 at 1:55, I guess an editor made a tiny mistake. Just couldn't help not pointing it out...
I'd be interested to see how this compares to a Linux distro. A guy I used to work with said he switched to Ubuntu for his wife's old laptop and it performed noticeably better than Windows.
Many Linux distros can breathe new life into old PCs. Some bigger distros can actually be pretty intensive too, but I used Linux Mint Debian Edition on an old PC and it only used about 600 MB of RAM! It really is like making an old PC new again! That said, I’d recommend trying it out first, and if the hardware is very old or underpowered you may want a minimalist distro like Puppy Linux that is meant to run on minimal hardware.
Chrome OS is a GNU+Linux distro, like Ubuntu. In fact, the first versions of Chrome OS was based on Ubuntu. ChromeOS still uses some components from Ubuntu, but of course, the browser is the window system, which makes it unique.
@@andmicbro1 Man I am rocking Linux Mint XFCE for my primary driver as Windows 10 eats up RAM. I code Laravel and VueJS, and when doing local development on Windows 10, it eats RAM that I cannot even preview the result at the browser (as Windows 10 already take some RAM up). Dualbooting to Linux Mint XFCE, it goes as light as a feather, I can code + run dev both Laravel (On Atom) and VueJS (On VSCODE), while opening opera, watching youtube, opening google docs, sheets, some API docs, and stackoverflow haha (Lenovo IdeaPad 3 with Ryzen 7 5700U + 8GB DDR4 Soldered RAM as the culprit. I know the CPU is decent, but the RAM is the limit)
if you want to install chrome os on a macbook you need first to install cloudready and then from cloud ready update to chrome OS. that worked for my old mac mini from 2011
You guys need to know this. Chrome OS can run regular Linux desktop applications that use the Wayland windowing system. This includes all Linux apps that use the GTK GUI library, which is most of them. Therefore, it may be possible to run apps Blender on a Chromebook, but you have to build the app from source yourself so that you can rebuild the dependencies as static libraries that can be incorporated into the application binary.
A really interesting summary. I did actually install flex on an older HP laptop a couple of months ago, and for younger kids it’s great especially for Google classroom and docs etc. And it runs really fast.
I did the same with endless os on one laptop for my younger siblings I converted to a desktop, and even xbuntu on a another 2011 hp laptop I had from when I was a kid for them to play on.
I've used X200s-X230s with Win 10, 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a boot SSD and found them to be absolutely fantastic machines. Really glad it did so well, especially since the thumbnail made it seem that the thinkpad wouldn't hold up well.
well, i will stick to manjaro or linux mint / lubunto way better compatiblity, great battery life (with a little apt install) really easy to install apps. and overall has almost every feature that i would like in a toaster pc. i used it on my old 2006 dell, with core 2 duo, 2 gb of ram, and a slow hdd, and it did boot really fast (most of the time), cannot say about battery life since it died back in 2010, but it did give a "humf" to it. would be nice to see a comparison between installing those systems and chrome os to old systems.
I agree. My HP EliteDesk has a Gen.4 Core i5 and is not compatible with Windows 11 in an easy way. I also have a Lenovo ThinkCentre with a Core 2 Duo and I am running some form of Ubuntu on it. The comparison between "Alt+OS" from Windows or Chrome would be neat to see.
Can confirm the SSD is the biggest upgrade you can make to an older computer. The old workstation (its some Dell SFF desktop) I use as a media center has had its Core i3 replaced with an i5 I had, and the ram upgraded from 4 to 8 GBs, All that and a distro of Linux started up pretty slowly on a mechanical HDD, at least compared to Windows 10 on an SSD (never actually timed it, but for sure under 20 seconds).
I just urged my uncle to buy a Chromebook. Thank you for the information in this video because now I realize it wasn't a mistake. Mislabeled keys and the potential to not have basics like volume controls work correctly would have just confused him. We could have saved some money but in the end it would have been more hassle to convert his old Windows laptop. Besides we would have likely needed to buy an SSD to speed things up and to preserve his original drive in case he wants Windows back for some reason.
yeah but you could have just put linux instead and then if he wanted to he could use it as a real computer if he really wanted to or at least be able to put pictures on it
If he can't even figure out how to set the volume, I don't think a Linux distro would have helped, unfortunately. You vastly overestimate the average user's tech savviness and willingness to learn.
@@robotortoise again theirs nothing to learn, the web browser is already installed and pinned to the task bar, it even has libre office which is basically a open source Microsoft office also preinstalled and offline which cannot be said about chrome, linux has everything chrome OS has to offer and much more, there is absolutely no reason to use chrome OS unless you want to open yourself up to spyware and even viruses now since all the normies are getting chromebooks. and on top of all that, chromebooks are much more expensive than just buying a used laptop. I bought my laptop that's an I7 16gb of ram with a 120gb SSD for 120$, a third the price of a used chromebook, it has linux on it and I'm able to use it as a real computer and not just limited to a webbrowser
tbh with yall just having released a video on that slimmed down Windows version I think this video could have hugely benefited from a comparison between ChromeOS Flex, regular Windows/OSX, that slim windows version and some light Linux distro. So the peeps actually watching it for the hard recommendations and not just entertainment get way more value out of it
A few months ago I put flex on an old i5 ultrabook thing I had laying around because it had a great screen and my mom needed a new laptop + she uses Google, YT, and Android at a basic level already. It already had an Samsung pro SSD and 16gb of ram, so it's utter overkill, but the UX and simplicity was the reason I put it on for her. Avoiding ewaste for longer 🐱
ThinkPad X230 once again proving to be a beast of a used daily driver. Got mine for almost 5 years ago for cheap, and with a ram upgrade and an SSD, and it's still chugging along just fine!
9:26 - You mentioned Horst's laptop was due to a slow HDD, there was a b-roll footage of an SSD being the replacement drive. Was an SSD used for the 1 minute boot time or was it using the original hard drive? Was the original boot time on an old installation with files dotted around the hard drive or a clean formatted install?
the intro is like watching a bunch of overly supportive dads during a practice match
Those are some cool dads I don't mind though
Indeed 🤣
@1488 Dental 🤣
And I love it😂😂😂
I loved the intro sooo much!
Shoutout to my Thinkpad for doing so well! This was the device I both wrote my script about and on when I interviewed as a writer, before getting hired in Logistics. It’s a great little machine and I cannot recommend it more, even in 2022.
I'm still using a T430 from 2012. I never doubted your x230 for a second!!! 💪💪
You should start posting to YT. You get a bunch of followers easily from working there. I went to subscribe and noticed you don't have any content. Just a thought
The X230 is actually still an extraordinarily popular model among Thinkpad enthusiasts for a variety of reasons, so I'm not at all shocked it did so well here. (I always opted for larger models myself, so I never owned one, but they're recommended so often by folks looking for low-cost reliable computers and considering older Thinkpads that it's hard to avoid.)
T61 running Ubuntu 22.04LTS and going strong 💪😎
I just bought one like 2 weeks ago lmao
I think the main takeaway here is that thinkpads are still amazing and last forever
god tier thinkpad!
unless you get it from school then it's crap
And apple is an absolute joke, that laptop has probably received 100 updates that intentionally slowed it down lmao.
@@Fine_i_set_the_handle uhh that's Windows, Apple if you have one update they just stop it entirely with one update
If it wasn't for Framework, I'd have bought a Thinkpad...
This video made me love my Thinkpad even more. 8 years being my main machine and still going strong.
bad ssd connector on my t570 Fucked up my nvme Slot.
Time needs you to send it now in trash can and bring a new macbook
@@j12325 why not just new Thinkpad?? Why overpriced Mac book?
@@marianoalvarez6467 we only have one life, and i think we should try diffrent things instead of sticking to one particular thing or brand for whole life. Macbooks also have many things to offer which is worth giving a try rather than becoming a ThinkPad only or macbook only guy for whole life
@@j12325 agreed on trying new but apple is overpriced plain and simple. You have to admit I'm correct on that
A comparison to a lightweight linux distro would have been interesting, just to see how much of a difference the operating system could make.
linux have apps, chrome os not
I was hoping they would do this as well. Lightweight distros have been shown time and time again to breathe new life into old machines with the only issue typically being the battery life can be poor depending on the make and model.
Arc?
Here you go :) In my personal experience, when running antix only some things were faster, like opening certain apps and loading webpages, but it's not worth it. Chrome os is easier to use, has more features and is overall faster than antix, linux mint (cinnamon, xfce and mate), kali linux and pop! os didn't even run. The only downside that wasn't mentioned in the video, is on some systems the boot time is stupid slow compared to linux (~12 seconds linux and 1:30 minutes chrome os.) After spending a stupid amount of time tinkering, if you are a diehard "more fps" fan, go for antix. But if you don't mind loosing a bit of performance for WAY more comfort and overall snappiness go for Chrome os flex. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes, English is not my first language. Thank you for the time!
That's like comparing Usain Bolt to an anemic child with Leukemia and a mental disability in a 100m sprint.
Practically ANY Linux distro will absolutely and utterly DESTROY any OS on old machines. The Linux Kernel is so efficient, it can literally run on a toaster. Like what do they expect to see here? Like, a fully usable Gentoo system can use as little as 64mb of RAM, install a DE and you won't even break 200mb of RAM usage.
Linux still remains the undefeated king when it comes to old Laptops. And while antiX is a solid recommendation, Lubuntu is not.
Can we all give the ThinkPad a round of applause for being so solid and useable after 10 years?
Edit: Do NOT buy Crucial BX SSDs as linked below in the description unless you are on a really tight budget. They have no DRAM cache so suck with sustained reads and writes, as well as having poor endurance. The MX500 lineup is much better.
and being a smartass segue... TO THE SPONSOR!?!?!
For running chromeOS the BX series is fine but that’s about it
Which crucial would you recommend? (thanks)
@@NemouseJurado MX500 series
@@NemouseJurado The Crucial MX drives are solid for performance per dollar, but not great for endurance. Absolutely fine for average laptop use though.
Samsung, Seagate and SK Hynix make some great drives if you want to spash the cash.
TBH I've always found switching to an SSD does do quite a lot for an older computer but another thing that works well in conjunction with that upgrade is to also upgrade the ram. Older laptops generally have upgradable ram and even if it's only a 2GB jump it still helps quite a lot
I have an old 2017 MacBook Air and I plan to do this exact thing since its still good, just a pain in my ass at times.
@@LolbeeSFMiirc a 2017 macbook air has soldered ram and a soldered ssd, pretty much zero repairable parts inside
I’ve put chrome OS flex on a crappy old laptop. It definitely made it much more usable, though after sustained use it seems to struggle. I tried lubuntu and other light Linux distros first, but chrome OS was much more usable
Can you play Steam games there?
@@jennytalia8224 chromeOS? no, out of the question
@@dinozaurpickupline4221 it's been out of support for almost 2 years, so, I wouldn't trust the security of it
@@user-xr3rb6pn9m he mentioned crappy old laptop
Will my old picture’s be transferred over to the new chrome flex or do I need to back it up to save them first
Trying to upgrade parents windows VISTA on a dell
LOL
Honestly the Thinkpad was the star of the show. As they said, change the HD to a SSD and buy a replacement battery and you've got a great web browsing and doc writing machine. Here in the UK I see them starting around £120. Brilliant robust school work machine.
That's definitely a good solution. Love those machines. I have ADHD so it's better to have a Chromebook or Brunch modded Laptop since I can't do much but work on it. It's better to not have the ability to do other things at all rather than using a PC and attempting to stop myself from doing other things.
oh yeah! and where Thinkpads were sold in such large quantities compared to many other laptops you could get in that price range, if the battery life isnt cutting it for you, there are TONS of vendors still selling new batteries you can replace it with! and where up until around 2016 iirc all the batteries were external, it makes it very friendly for non-techy people to replace them without having to tear the machine apart!
If you want to do just a bit more with them install a good stable Linux distro like Solus w/Budgie DE that's simirolling meaning it's a one time install, it updates once things are vetted, and verified to work, and not like Arch that pushes out the updates soon as they get released, and not like Debian based that can take ages to update. But yep an SSD upgrade, and even a RAM upgrade to an old machine if possible, are 2 of the best thing you can do to get them ready for Linux, or Chrome OS Flex.
Additionally, unlike new X-Series Thinkpads, the one in question was meant to just be a lightweight, battery efficient web browser and doc writer even when new. And since dual cores are still usable for that purpose, it can easily fulfill that role while feeling better built than the flimsy chromebooks or celeron thinbooks of today.
@@NextEevolution The newest Celerons are pretty strong while still being efficient
I spent $36 to upgrade my in-laws 3-4yr old laptop to a 500gb ssd and the difference is mind blowing. It was almost unusable before and now it feels just like a new computer for light tasks (which is all they did anyway). It’s so aggravating how long oem’s stuck to spinning drives, and you have to wonder how many people bought new computers because they didn’t realize all they needed was an ssd.
I recently got a new laptop, and while shopping around I was astonished at how many new laptops still use fucking mechanical hard drives
@@Raneyguything64 Anything with a mechanical boot drive is mostly unusable. Unless its linux or chromeos
@@DipJyotiDeka yeah. I work with old computers with hdds sometimes, and after getting used to the speed of ssds, there is no going back
That’s because HDDs are still less expensive than SSDs. Literally, a new HDD at 2TB is 50, while a low tier SSD could be $110, with it being really lucky if you find a 1TB version in stock for that price
@@DipJyotiDeka Trust me, I know. When I built my first PC I used a 2TB mechanical drive I had laying around. Took around 5 minutes to get to the login screen, and another 5 to open a browser. The SSD I got was the best $100 I had spent up to that point. My laptop has an nvme SSD in it and it's significantly faster to boot. I could never go back to an HDD.
Been using SSDs since 2012 and ever since, I've been a HUGE advocator for using an SSD on EVERYTHING possible, from my dad's 2007 HP PC to my sister's HP Netbook (remember those?), even a cheapo SSD can bring a seemingly "dead" laptop back to life, it's INSANE.
I booted ChromeOS Flex off my Lenovo Ideapad 5 Flex via a USB flash drive just for fun, and it's actually a nice looking OS. I've never owned a Chromebook, only used one for school for a few years.
It's refreshing to mess around with a new OS, but sucks you can't install Android apps on it. I'm not 100% confident I could set up Brunch Framework for that (it's a lot of steps), but I might in the future. Otherwise, it works with most of my laptop's hardware, just not the fingerprint sensor as far as I know, and the function buttons for brightness, volume, ect. are kinda funky. Nice to have, honestly.
can you right click on a file in chrome os and see properties ? i just brought a chrome book as a back up but can't change the find this option
@@ShimmyAkira There isn't necessarily anything like "Properties" on Chrome OS Flex like there is on Windows. Closest there is on Flex is "Get info", which only shows you very few lines of info about the file, and it doesn't seem like you can change file properties.
There may be one like Windows properties if your device is using the native Chrome OS on a Chromebook rather than running on Chrome OS Flex for non-Chromebook devices. I doubt it, though. Chrome OS is very barebones and very closed in letting users do much with the OS.
Get Linux Mint
I have the same laptop. It's amazing how much of a transformation it was!
@Dragonsong Used one *in* school. Never took one home or owned one otherwise.
I didn't hear mention of it in the video, but there is one more performance-oriented oddity with ChromeOS to consider. If you have (I believe) a Skylake or older CPU in your device, ChromeOS disables hyper-threading by default as a way to alleviate a known hardware security flaw in those CPUs. You can re-enable it in the chrome-flags page by changing the setting and rebooting. This may change some of the performance benchmark \ battery life scores in the tests quite a bit, assuming the devices are HT capable.
this.
Ideally update laptop bios to update your CPUs microcode too
Who needs security! Please keep that junk off the internet
What a stupid thing to do. If you cared about security, privacy and that sort of stuff, you shouldn't be using Chrome OS in the first place, right?
@@EvanOfTheDarkness LOL, legit comment
I was skeptical when I saw Bush's Baked Beans listed as an SSD option, but once I tried it out, I canned my old hard drive. The performance wasn't perfect straight from the tin, but after a night of updates, it really sprouted and the performance gains grew incredibly fast.
How is this a thing?
Cool beans.
i laughed so fucking hard when i seen that. i thought it was a joke, and actually went to a SSD, nope, beans. just beans.
This comment was a gas.
You guys never cease to amaze me with your sponsor segues. I'm always stuck thinking about when and even if you will ever run out of ways to do them
Wouldn't a better test have been to compare a fresh install of ChromeOS on these devices vs. a fresh install of their original OSs? I mean who knows what kind of bloat or malware found its way onto these old machines while they were being used. Reinstalling any fresh OS would get rid of all that.
did they say if it was a fresh install or not? I assumed the compared fresh installs.
I can definitely confirm the SSD upgrade makes a world of difference. Recently wanted to throw away my mom's old computer since it runs like garbage, checked the specs to see why it ran so poorly, and noticed it had a perfectly good i5-4400 in it. It was just paired with 4GB RAM and a hard drive. Upgraded to a nice 16 gig kit and a zippy SSD, and wham bam, it's like a new machine!
My mom uses it for work and we have some security cameras, I installed the program to peek into the cameras, but she never ended up using it because it just made the whole thing slow down to a crawl. After the upgrade, it could easily handle twenty Firefox tabs, basic image editor, remote desktop connection, and the camera software at the same time. It really is like a new machine now. She's super happy with it :) It's like I bought her a whole new computer for 120 bucks.
I did the same with an old Dell 1st Gen i5 or i7 (like it makes a difference it's that old). SSD, Ram and battery upgrade and it's like a new computer.
I hate to break it to you but the ram upgrade is the only thing that mattered. The hard drive won't be an issue once you get going (for light users anyways). So even the SSD isn't necessary. For people that just browse the web they barely need anything aside from 8gb of ram. Pretty much everyone in my family has an old laptop so I know the limits of old machines.
@@flameshana9 sorry but that's just wrong. The main complaint from both tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy is always "it just runs so slow" and that's primarily about how long it takes to boot up, and then how long it takes for programs to open.
Both my gf's and my mum's laptops would take 5+ minutes to turn on and open a browser. My gf in particular never used hers because it was so bad (and windows updates would genuinely be left overnight and still be going in the morning).
My mum was wanting to buy another new laptop. I bet with them both that if they each spent £30 on a 500gb Crucial MX500 for me to swap into their laptops, and if they couldn't describe the improvement as "monumental" then I would buy the SSDs from them for my pc.
Neither of them would give up the SSDs.
@@flameshana9 I can vouch that SSD actually mattered more than RAM in most instances. I have a 9 y/o laptop, and on year 6-7 or so it was so slow I can barely do anything with it without frustration.
swapped the HDD to SSD, then swapped the DVD Drive to the HDD. basically ran like new after that. didn't touch the ram at all (8GB)
still using the machine to this day
@@joeltaylor7741 An SSD is always a good upgrade, but you said that a program made it slow to a halt. The cpu/gpu didn't change, so having a faster drive doesn't suddenly make you able to run programs when you couldn't before. Only the ram can do that.
When something is slow to start up that's the drive. But when you can't run several things at once that's ram.
I finally updated my HDD to a SSD a while back. The change in speed was more than I thought. It makes such a big difference for not a big price. Depending on the size obviously.
SSDs are quite cheap now a days with china spreading their offbrands, which work fairly well at a 1/4 of the price.
@@koilamaoh4238 china's SSD have a big problem. They using old 3D TLC process.
The cells will degrade very fast on writing, also you can see it on a small-space, like 64\128gig.
But your purpose is just to setup a fast internet-browsing machine - it's cheap and nice option
If you have a model with a CD-ROM drive, you can buy an HDD tray that will replace your CD-ROM drive with your existing HDD. This way you can get a small SSD, and use your existing HDD for your larger applications. Another perk is that you dont have to back up your data from your HDD to your SSD, since it's already there.
@@DrenImeraj Yea thats fine with PCs, fairly basic. Most laptops now a days dont even have that cdrom anymore, unless its old; as cdrom drives are a dying tech, no one cares for them. I barely even use my BD-r drive.
@@nikostalk5730 so thats why my pc somehow works even slower than any hdd
yes it loads faster but everytime i right click an app, it took literally a minute just to pop up a menu action
I still use my 15-year old Acer Extensa 5220 after upgrading the cpu from a Celeron 530 to a Core2 Duo T7700, ram from 512mb to 3gb, 120gb HDD to 120gb SSD, windows 7 from windows XP and it's still perfectly useable for basic tasks. I spend maybe $20 in total for the upgrades.
Same, I found a comically large chonker of a laptop in the waste bin, Acer 7730Z. It was made for Windows Vista once but now runs a Core 2 Extreme X7900, 4 GB ram and 120 GB ssd and ZorinOS installed! Runs great
I had an Hp laptop with an i3 6006u and 4 gb of ram and an hdd ... installed linux mint went faster but not to the degree i would like and then opened it up and changed the hdd with an ssd and the difference is huge . Just change your hard drive and install something lite like linux .
A video where Linus goes over different benchmark programs to run on your own system at home would be cool. Diving more into the meanings of the results and tips on things you can do without just upgrading components to better your performance. As always love these videos you guys put out.
Get pretty easy better performance with (probably clean windows install, but who cares) Overclocking combined with undervoling. At least that's my opinion, would be stoked to hear someone else's
I definitely second this.
@@rubindublone5932 I'd also love a video on the basics of overclocking from Linus. There's lots of videos out there but i trust what they put out more in their videos lol.
@@2etheth Videos about Overclocking exists
If this it not enough Der8auer shot Videos in EN
@@chessprince1164 but we want Linus' soothing voice to teach us
i love how one of the probationary employees got out of his probation and instantly first thing is acting like a cheerleeder with other known members of LTT really adds character and gets them used to this
Yeah they really seem to build up their newer people, would have loved to work at such a company.
i think ltt with the whole probation idea is really unquie
@@VeraTR909 yeah i feel like their way of being themselves while being able to work at their full potential while the vibe they have kinda helps you with confidence, I mean just look at denis, or any other staff for that matter on their first videos ( except dan 😏 he got instantly used to it and first moment he showed up he had like the whole confidence in the builsing acquired) and their videos now !
@@knightwolf3511 I think he said once on WAN show that the probation is a legal requirement in Canada. I think they just keep those people off camera though to kinda cover their butts if that person doesn't work out, or something like that.
@@knightwolf3511 Probation is actually a legal requirement in Canada.
And it doesn't sound like a bad idea at all.
That, for a few months, both employer and employee can try each other out and, during probation, either party can ask for a "no fault" divorce.
Not just that the employer can see if the employee is any good before properly hiring them, but it also works the other way, in that employees can also call it off with "no fault", if they discover that it really doesn't work for them either.
Like, check that the "marriage" is going to work out for both sides, before actually walking down the aisle and saying "I do".
It seems like a good idea to me, so I don't know why other countries don't also have this too.
It's something of a hassle to get Brunch configured but, once you do, it's pretty easy going. Do note that you do have to manually update Chrome from a repo if you're using Brunch, though (or at least you did when I was last using a machine running Brunch).
what config?
cool video, but I definitely would have liked to see how the "chromebooks" faired vs running Linux as that would be the more path for an older computer.
depends on what you need. You cant use the play store, so all you get is a simple file storage system to manage your data, and a browser. With linux, you can at least install apps/games
Just a note. They bought a company called neverware that made a distro of chromium OS (the open source version that the proprietary version is based on just like the web browser) called cloudready with some proprietary bits added in minus somethings like android app support. It's been around for ages but google swept in bought them and rebranded it as chrome OS flex
Ah yes, totally not an anti-trust move in the likes of Microsoft (spits).
" Thank you for startinf this project for us. *_It's ours now._* "
Yup, they didn't quite "release the OS for everyone to use", they bought an existing modified version. It's a kind of neat product though, and if we're lucky it'll get better support by Google than Neverware. If we're unlucky they'll kill it within the year lol
@@jdatlas4668 Google’s projects are like unvaccinated children - they don’t live very long
I'd love to see this done with linux mint or some other easy, user friendly linux distro. Chrome os is too limiting but a good linus distro is actually versatile.
that would be what I would want to try.. that being said- the last 5 times I actually tried that, I didn't get very far. There a some things I never get running correctly on laptops with linux:
- GPU drivers.. I never had full support with my hardware- making it slower than it should be
- all the laptop specific stuff like FN keys, volume knobs, media keys, brightness control... never worked fully
- I don't know a lot about linux- so using it and installing stuff means googeling way too much and then ctrl+v isn't even paste...
- there are way too many different linux versions.. so you have to google your ass off even before you can install anything..
- printers.. never found a working driver for any of my printers in linux.. I do have to print stuff
- alternatives for the Windows software I use... are not easy to find
- stability... linux is supposed to be stable.. but I had a lot of crashes
I was of the same idea. I was pretty confused at how everything they described fit exactly into how a good Linux Mint works. I've managed to revive and use about five old laptops and one old desktop solely using Linux Mint.
@@olik136 As @Freak says, try Linux Mint. As you can see in the Linus and Luke Linux gaming challenge, parts of Linux do have the problems you describe, but Linux also has support for things you'd never guess. My old Dell Inspiron laptop had a Windows-unsupported wireless card that caused crashes. After putting Mint on it, the system not only worked better, but the wireless card was usable again.
@@olik136 The printer thing is super weird. I've always had printers just work with no fiddling. It's often easier than using windows, at least in that regard, than windows. If you really get stuck most manudactures have drivers you can find
Edit: The functio keys can be fixed if the manufacturer has linux drivers, if not there are plenty of programs than can allow the same functionality . There is a learning curve to linux but it isn't too difficult if you're reasonably tech literate and stick to distros like mint or pop.
@keithsze001 That is mostly nvidias fault. AMD opensourced their drivers so their drivers are often better on linux than windows. Nvidia has kept all their drivers super closed source and they havn't teally put enough work in for the first part options to be great. Some of this should be resolved relatively soon though. Nvidia is open sourcing a couple key parts of their drivers
Chromebook = specifically for internet/surf. Technically not spec'd for video and gaming. The manuals in most models tell you not to game on them. If you just want something to read email, there ya go.. for $30, a chromebook ain't bad for reading posts.
Why do chromebook ads say they're meant for gaming when they aren't
@@burgerkingfries4941 Thats bad 3rd party manufacturers going against google guidelines.
Wlhere to buy one i need this for my online school
@@Jomuerudoumandanberarumino ask your parents
Love the video, but a couple things to consider.
-the mm size is not the only thing you need to consider when getting a new m.2 drive. SATA m.2 and NVMe m.2 slots are not comparable with eachother, make sure you know what you need. Also, some older/cheaper Chromebooks may use eMMC/mini PCIe storage instead.
-the screw is the firmware write protect screw. It prevents the firmware from being changed, or custom firmware being written, among other things. This may not always be a screw, sometimes it is the battery, a switch, or cr50 that can be removed with a special cable (SuzyQ). You don’t need to put the screw back, but you can for security purposes.
Would be nice to actually see you testing against a lightweight linux distro and comparing it with Chrome OS
Our little Chromebook runs fine on Ubuntu 22.04LTS 💪😎
Linux: How to de-Google your laptop
Linux is way too much of a hassle to use for average users vs chrome OS let's be real.
I dont feel thats a fair comparison if you look at how easy it is to use chrome os for windows users. Way less problems probably.
but if you just mean for comparison, might be interesting
@@scruffmcgruff8742 It’s way easier than windows. You don’t even need to install it you can run it from a flash drive
I think the test would be way more interesting if he also compared an old with a fresh install of Win10 (which one did he use?) as well as also tested Lubuntu to at least offer a baseline for Debian Linux systems as an alternative.
But why test it against something like Lubuntu, when any Ubuntu version is kind of notorious for their bloat?
This just goes to show: LTT _needs_ some more staff that can use Linux, not just Anthony. There's hundreds of great, blazing fast, light weight distros out there apart from Lubuntu which isn't even one of the most popular choices.
@@Finkelfunk
Well, people call the snap packages bloat which is true to a point, but usually comfort functions and nice animations equal "bloat", and Lubuntu already lacks a bunch of them. I mean he did mention AntiX but that's certainly not as modern and easy as a any Ubuntu. Then there's Fedora but being cutting edge is pointless on old hardware. Let's not even start with Arch.
You have to keep in mind that the people using those machines most likely wouldn't be enthusiasts, even minor details like the rock solid translations of the UI in Ubuntu may matter.
@@Finkelfunk I don't know if you tried lubuntu but except from snapd lubuntu should be pretty well optimized.
Ps. I wonder how lubuntu compares to fedora lxqt spin
@@Alias_Anybody The enthusiast point is the most important one here. But people always assume that it's rocket science to install an operating system when it's really not, most of the time you just follow instructions on a wiki. Comfort functions don't necessarily mean bloat, bloat is anything that is installed but serves little to no purpose for the task at hand as well as unclean code bases. That being said: I personally haven't driven Lubuntu, but I've tested Ubuntu and I'm not a big fan of Canonical.
Also I personally believe Arch is actually a VERY good variant especially for low spec PCs since it is a suckless distro which means lightning fast, lightweight, responsive and flexible with no bullsh*t attached.
I know bleeding edge is not for everybody, but that is my first choice for old laptops. Combine that with a Lightweight DE or if you feel fancy use KDE, with a few tweaks the performance hit is still rather minimal and the system runs fast and reliable.
@@Finkelfunk
Anything that's not preconfigured is a burden during setup. Not an issue for people who know what to do and how to do backups, but for the masses it has to be idiot proof and quick to reinstall. Even without a wiki.
Base isn't that important as long as browser, office and file manager are there and ready.
"To see how many 1080p videos can run at once without any studder..."
My laptop when running 1 720p30 fps video ☠️
LTT, this is really great content. I'm getting on a bit now after a career in electronics and I.T. since the early 90's, and I try to avoid sitting in front of a computer screen as much as possible nowadays, but this subject drew me in... as have other LTT vids that CZcams has suggested to me in recent months. Just wanted to say great work... and that's coming from a cynical former techie turned tech-avoider.
Here's something I find really sad: I work in IT, and the techs that work at one of our other sites are convinced that a SSD does not improve performance. So while my site has been happily upgrading computers consistently over the past two years, that team is struggling to figure out why MS Teams slows down their computers so much.
That is so stupid that I refuse to believe anything you just said.
@@umamifan I'm assuming you've never worked in a corporate environment? :D
@@honorablejay Oh I know how it goes. It's just, I've never seen it get to this level before. Godspeed you for sticking around. I would've lost it
the magic of updates
updates = automatic slowdown
please forward them any videos about it
This should be an advertisement for old enterprise Lenovo laptops. Widely available, reliable, and surprisingly serviceable.
The biggest problem they have is shit battery life, which is kind of a deal breaker when you consider they're laptops. My old Thinkpad T430 lasts a whole 5 minutes off of the plug. Literally.
old ThinkPads are the best budget laptops
@@tralphstreet I mean, that will happen to every laptop with a battery out there, ever. Replacement ThinkPad batteries are also relatively cheap.
@@doqtorisykero7971 Even new ones struggle to get past 3 hours.
The major reason why its the go to laptop for all the linux enthusiasts out there. super reliable and user upgradable and repairable.
Probably the best intro to any of your videos I've ever seen. And I've seen ALOT of them.
13:05:
Just FYI for those that don't know, Chromebooks are a terrible choice of machine to give to a child. The feature that is supposed to track and limit how much time they spend using it ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT WORK. The only time limit that works is setting a bedtime at which they will no longer be able to use it anymore for the day (say 8pm). So if your plan is to give your kid a laptop that will say only allow them to do 1 or 2 hours of games or social media per day but they can have several hours of use to do their homework or educational apps, ChromeOS does not do this. It claims it does, it has settings to set this up, but they simply do not work at all. The kid can be playing games for hours and Chrome reports no usage.
Works for me very well so your experience may very
@@brydonthunder Well, I guess it must be working for somebody or they couldn't have it on the market. But it isn't working for a LOT of people - if you look at the support forums you'll see a lot of open issues like I am experiencing that have never been resolved.
How old is your child? It's possible that they've worked around or figured out how to disable those limitationd.
@@moonpiedumplings3059 Too young to figure out how to do that, and only has pretty much average computer and tech capabilities. So if it is something my child figured out how to do then Google really seriously dropped the ball and its just the same as if the features just don't work.
@@andrewawakened628 How young? I'm on a discord server (no I will not share the link) where I am witnessing middle schoolers finding exploits worth actual money, and then distributing them for the purpose of unblocking things.
Can we talk about how great that ThinkPad was running both before and after getting chrome OS. I bought a second hand 2011 x220 a few years ago for my computer science degree at uni of all things. With a £20 SSD it still runs like a dream, particularly with Ubuntu
The last three laptops I've purchased, for myself and others, have been from Lenovo for this reason. They make gud stuf.
Yep, x230 is basically a modern device. Especially with SSD. The weakness is the screen.
Same here, Ubuntu budgie, very nice indeed. Garage computer!
Had no interesting erors enjoy it working.
@@Derlaft my x220t has pretty decent IPS screen
I had a feeling this follow up was gonna happen after Linus bought a Chromebook for his son a while back. Also, David was killing it with the cheerleading intro.
Too bad the official distro doesn't support playstore apps,would have made it impressive fpr school and other applications
Linus: speeds up laptop with some crappy OS
Ubuntu: am I a joke to you?
My favorite feature is ChromeOS Flex's ability to restore each user's Desktop to any ChromeOS computer logged into. I've had my drive crash once in the middle of the work day. I reinstalled ChromeOS to a blank drive, logged in, and I was up and running in about 30 minutes. I now keep a spare ChromeOS laptop available for situations like this. My primary ChromeOS computer is an old iMac. 👍🏽
Honestly Chrome OS Flex is just the Chrome OS I used back in 2015 in college - back before the linux container or android apps on chrome were even a thing ( I had a cheap $100 chromebook back then). Running it on any fairly modern machine if all you do is stream, type up a few docs etc is honestly just as good of an experience as it was then. Its not for gaming, video editing or heavy lifting - just the basics.
I have ADHD so it's better to have a Chromebook since I can't do much but WORK on it. It's better to not have the ability to do other things at all rather than using a PC and attempting to stop myself from doing other things.
I used a chromebook all throughout college. Did run into annoyance towards the end, but having a very thin ARM laptop that ran a mostly modern OS and had a solid 10 hour battery life easily outweighed any cons in 2015 for only $250
sorry but it is not enough even for basics..
@@trexeyesonly55 Which is why i used it for all 4 years of college
@@trexeyesonly55 yeah I only used it for two years of school and used it up until I finished school, definitely not enough lmao
1:00 looking a bit SUS
I totally read that title like it was a big flex to have chrome os running on your non chrome device.
Obviously late here, but I always figured that if less OS overhead was the goal on a lower end (older maybe) pc, I thought Linux would always be the 1st option, especially cause Google is data collection numero uno
same late
Except desktop Linux is a pain in the a** and seemingly has little to no speed advantage. The reason for it's image as being such a great os seems to be largely due to condescending and even aggressive people that have spent a huge amount of time learning how to use it. They'll respond to basic issues with 'you only need to ' and proceed to list multiple command line instructions.
I had Windows 7 on an old Core Duo laptop with lots of battery life left, worked great, but as I had no use for it I installed (Manjaro)Linux.
What a shambles, Linux even managed to annihilate the battery by constantly spinning up the hdd - even when manually put to sleep, it would wake up immediately when it was not being used at all. It was also faster on Windows, despite the thin Linux installation.
Never mind the terrible, random interface, overlapping settings apps, basic stuff that doesn't work, repeated requirements due to issue command line instructions, flat battery(I wonder why) during an update making it unbootable (I had to use command line instructions to repair it), etc.
I haven't even found it to be more stable, though the os itself is clearly better than all the apps you have to use in it.
I've tried multiple desktop Linux variants over the years, but have found them universally pointless except where the use is very specific and restrained - such as my htpc on a thin client, which uses little more than a browser. Albeit the only real advantage of Linux then is being relatively secure, smaller, and can boot off usb into ram(for puppy linux, which I use) if wanted. Even that had problems though, I had to manually edit things just to get sound out of hdmi & analog via 3.5mm at the same time. Settings, apps, etc are also still scattered and utterly inconsistent, it just doesn't matter so much with this use.
ie: it all adds up with how Linux is overwhelmingly used, in specific and/or controlled builds(by specialists) for specific uses - Android phones/tablets/TVs, servers, routers, etc.
@@DoubleMonoLR Def see where you're coming from, I had a Linux class in high school, so I got to sit with it in a controlled environment for 2 yrs. That being said, I'm curious what specific distributions you've used? From the experiences you've stated, it seems like you've gone after more specialized builds (manjaro aside), rather than more mainstream options. For example, if you're open to it, I'd like to recommend Zorin OS, it's a small offshoot of Ubuntu, that is designed with Windows users in mind, in that, the desktop environment is built to look as similar to windows as possible and interactions with said environment are built to feel similar to that of Windows. Just a thought, as I obviously don't know the full extent of your experience, and I've had nothing but a good time with Zorin.
@@DoubleMonoLR My experience was more or less the same say 5 years ago, but I'm currently on Fedora and it's been really smooth, general performance has been better than Windows but gaming has been hit and miss.
As for battery, on my Dell E6440 it's a little less than on Windows, (around 30 minutes less) on my Thinkpad it's at least 1 hour more, and on my Huawei laptop it's the same as Windows. Keep in mind that on a clean install, Linux would totally suck out the life of that poor battery but TLP improved that drastically (I wish it was the default on distros, but sadly it isnt).
As for a really old laptop, my acer aspire one (with GMA 965? iirc graphics and an old intel Atom, and a 5600RPM HDD), Windows just barely functions. Yes, Windows 10 installs, but other than that it's plain unusable. Heck, even Minecraft doesn't run because Windows only has OpenGL 1.4 support but Linux has OpenGL 2.1, which can run up to minecraft 1.12 i think. Perf was abysmal ofc, but hey it runs i guess.
Audio issues are the same story, used to be really bad but has been very good with pipewire. Nothing to say here really, pipewire is just a massive step up, and yes audio on linux was horrible before it and pulse. but now its good.
Finally, distro choice. I can't blame you for choosing it, but manjaro is kinda terrible. Distros generally don't matter, but manjaro is "special" to put it in a way. Chris titus' opinion on linux distros is more or less the same as mine, so feel free to check out his video on the topic (and his channel in general, makes good content, albeit a little clickbaity at times)
ChromeOS is a linux based OS. (it has linux as it's kernel). 👍👍👍
Curious how Brunch compares. I think Google is targeting exclusively the list of supported models and making sure they are totally rock solid rather than making merely any computer work "ok" and as fast as possible, because it's intended for enterprise and schools with older computers rather than enthusiasts. Ive run Flex's predecessor on ThinkPads myself and it works quite nicely tho. I think the main lesson here is literally just getting an SSD and more RAM is a huge upgrade for any old computer regardless of what it's running.
Brunch Framework works amazingly well on my old laptop with an SSD. Like battery life was about half an hour on Windows for example, and now I can watch a whole movie in bed without plugging it in. Watching videos in Full HD in general was not really possible on Windows with that laptop, now it is no problem, even with a bunch of tabs open.
Would be interesting to see what ChromeOS does against a fresh Windows install too, assuming the original data was from the existing installs. Great content!
One part of this is inaccurate. Chrome OS Flex DOES give access to the linux shell. I use it frequently. And hence there are plenty of non web apps that can be used (eg Libre Office).
Honestly I really like my little $100 Lenovo Flex 3 chromebook or whatever the hell it’s called.
Google suite of apps, mainly docs, very nice and useful.
Works perfectly fine for browsing and 4k video playback with display out available.
Came with a responsive touch screen that can be awesome to switch back and forth from while working.
Works perfectly fine for cloud gaming, the display looks just fine.
Runs emulation from PS1 down very well with few exceptions
Super lightweight and size is decent in terms of portability without build quality feeling cheap.
I feel like they catch too much hate to be honest. Some of it is deserved but for an easy, stable, somewhat fast out of the box experience it does about everything it needs to quite well for the awesome low costs they usually come with
And for the privacy freaks that hate google out there… I actually feel you. I run a pixel with grapheneOS and I usually even leave Orbot running on it too. I have USBs with Tails sitting around and do certain sensitive tasks in a VM regularly. But I also don’t mind selling my soul to be able to do normal things that de-googled and Linux devices are simply not well-capable of…. Like ease of use, fluid gaming, banking apps, etc…. Which is the same reason I also have the new iPhone every year.
0:52 that moment was a thing of subliminal beauty lol
To be honest I would go for some linux distro over Chrome OS... My dad uses ubuntu mate on his PC from 2005( it's still usable for light web browsing but not much else) but Linux has much better driver support and you only need etcher or Rufus to install it.
My old Thinkpad from 2013 is still going strong with windows so no need to change it there.
Seconded this! Too and that ltt team wouldn't test or compare Linux vs windows vs chrome os. That would be really interesting.
Also rocking x220t for some programming/development workloads and this is still a pretty solid machine.
Id do the same but chromeos is definitely a great option for technically illiterate people
Hell I thought ChromeOS was some gimped linux
@@PeakKissShot if you show them where chrome is or just make it auto run it would be same experience.
@@thatisthatoof well yes and no. Same we could tell about similarities between Mac and Linux.
My main browsing/youtube laptop is a 2012 Macbook Pro with Ubuntu installed onto an upgrade to SSD with a RAM increase (from 8 to 16 GB). It actually took a hit on battery life too even with the SSD, but took boot times from 3.5 minutes to circa 30 seconds. Macbooks are the only laptops I have never had to replace screen hinges on, so whilst I do miss the Delete key it is one of the most maintainable kickaround laptops I have ever used.
Bonus, I get to play Seven Kingdoms again due to it being one of the games you can install, which was one of the first games I ever bought for myself!
It's amazing how much the MacBook Pro improved for 2012. Using one right now with said tabs and 1080p without a hitch.
Owned a Chromebook for over 6 years. Long story short... Linus is right.
Edit: I'm not speaking for everyone. As a normal everyday computer to serve the standard purpose a laptop should serve, Chromebooks are king. For people like me who wish for those exclusive features, any other OS is for the best.
care to elaborate?
Lmfao I’m sorry you went through that 😂
@@alexrogers777 Basically Chrome OS comes with so many limitations, especially on behalf of their actual Chromebooks themselves, and Linus had touched on that concept in this video so it just reinforces the frustrations of my experience with a Chromebook personally
Chromebooks can be good for linux
@@darin7553 Everything is good for Linux.
1:30 This is the best sponsor segway ever.
Brunch ChromeOS is great, the kernels/options out of the box don't work with as much hardware (Camera,GPS,LTE) as standard linux distros. But, there are 4 kernels to choose from and the developer (Sebanc)really seems dedicated to adding patches for common issues. Brunch, is also a heck of a lot more stable than every androidx86 I've tried. I've left it running for days without charging and it enters/exits sleep state with no prob. The one major downside I find is a bad update (default disabled) or glitch could prompt you to powerwash (factory reset) with no easy/direct way to retrieve your data. It's great for people with moderate pc experience who are somewhat comfortable following linux based directions. (I'm bad with linux and managed) However, I would not recommend throwing it on the laptop of a non-tech savy person who may store crucial data on it.
I would have wanted a pay raise for that intro.
I've got a T440p with an SSD, CD drive replaced with an HDD port, Quad core i7 CPU with 16GB of ram. Also some cruddy integrated graphics. It's a beast and I'm surprised at how fast it is.
Odd the T440P does have an dedicated gpu unless dead or disabled while the regular T440 often doesn't have one at all just blank pads on the board.
@@MrKillswitch88 Yeah, sadly mine doesn't have the GT730M GPU. It instead has Intel 4600HD Graphics that can do some light gaming. In order to get the best performance out of the integrated GPU, you have to keep the laptop plugged in which is rather annoying and if you don't, you get stutters
2:40 "I'll buy you a computer but not connected to the Internet" - that's soo Indian
We purchased a $150 Chromebook form my mother in law, She loved it and used it everyday till she passed away. The upside, I didn't have to clean off all the viruses and garbage she downloaded. It made visits more enjoyable. She was not the most computer literate person but she was sharp and aware till she passed away. I miss her till this day.
You said that you didn't have time to spend on it but I just spent an evening setting it up on a Yoga L13 (gen 1) and can say quite confidently that Brunch is INCREDIBLE, *and* you can dual boot with it with no fear of disk wipes. Touch works, screen orientation works. For something that feels like as much of an awesome computer crime as a Hackintosh, I'm astounded how simple it was to set up. The only issue I had was that I didn't have UEFI and GPT set up for Windows 10, so you'll need to do that first to get booting to work properly with grub for windows; I'd had legacy boot enabled so W10 installed with MBR and Grub for Windows installed in BIOS mode, and so booting failed.
I still can't believe how easily it worked
0:57 wow that’s my name
1:25 8/10 segue to the sponsor
Definitely Linus’ best so far.
Brunch worked great for us on an older MSI gaming laptop (budget-ish model) until an update to the OS broke it and we ended up trying Chrome OS Flex after for stability on a more official channel and it's been fine ever since. RIP to the terminal and play store but hey, it's faster and snappier than ever before. Not to mention those insane boot times.
5:11 if you are wondering why the MacBook Pro lasted longer it is because of macOS. macOS optimises the battery and power consumption depending on its percentage unlike other laptops that run windows 10. It’s also the reason why all MacBooks old or new have longer lasting batteries than most modern windows laptops
I'd like to see something similar to this, but comparing windows/chromeOS/Linux on some older hardware. It'd be interesting to see how much the user experience changes and if all the hype about breathing new life is correct.
Here you go :) In my personal experience, when running antix (a literal 500mb linux distro lol) only some things were faster, like opening certain apps and loading webpages, but it's not worth it. Chrome os is easier to use, has more features and is overall faster than antix, linux mint (cinnamon, xfce and mate), kali linux and pop! os didn't even run. The only downside that wasn't mentioned in the video, is on some systems the boot time is stupid slow compared to linux (~12 seconds linux and 1:30 minutes chrome os.) After spending a stupid amount of time tinkering, if you are a diehard "more fps" fan, go for antix. But if you don't mind loosing a bit of performance for WAY more comfort and overall snappiness go for Chrome os flex. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes, English is not my first language.
Our little Chromebook runs fine on Ubuntu 22.04LTS 💪😎
The best use I got from a Chromebook was flashing Coreboot on it and installing a Linux distro (like Fedora with Suckless DWM).
They’re otherwise useless, especially if Google drops software support.
There's also x86 android and Bliss OS that could be interesting choices although usually I would agree and just go Linux.
I can also recommend MXLinux (based on AntiX) for devices with a harddrive. It boots noticeably faster compared to some other distros.
They're useless for the LTT tech savvy crowd but for absolute noobs who don't care and don't know anything about computers (especially older people) it's a really good option and the built-in Google integration is of value.
@@SaHaRaSquad MX Linux is the true Windows replacement for Windows power users. Stopped distro-hopping once I discovered it and I can't say enough good things about it.
AntiX is more for much older computers. It's insanely light, but it's gonna be missing a few quality-of-life features as a result. Q4OS might be pretty interesting as well since it's definitely the most Windows-XP-like distro of them all. Even has a full XP theme for it for Trinity.
lol. now thats peak computing. I had my fair share of DWM in my life but I would rather use Sway or Gnome (Wayland FTW)
12:40 It's just Google being incompetent again, making a decision that makes absolutely zero sense from even financial perspective is pretty standard at this point.
"Volentold" lol
Brings back them military memories.
Using Brunch on an old 2--in-1 from 2015.
It's great. Battery life went from 4-5 hours to around 7. Initially. Battery age has reduced that back somewhat, but I dread to think what the battery life would be in Windows at this point.
Linux apps have me covered for tasks like development and simple image editing. I mostly use the android apps for stuff like the android versions of Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate etc.
Overall happy with it, and Linux applications work surprisingly well.
I installed brunch on my 2018 hp that power throttles. That little laptop ran every OS from windows 10, 11, Ubuntu, ChromeOS to macOS. Just remember to install the brunch image inside a ext4 partition instead of FAT32, massive performance difference when updating.
Chrome os ran really well but battery life is best among all the OS unless I manually choose the governor on Linux. Browser performance is best on Chrome OS.
The Android apps are snappier than equivalent on windows or macOS.
Linux apps work well enough to get the job done, but the GUI does feel "virtualized" like parallels on mac. Terminal applications are at full speed, the same level as WSL on windows.
Dangit, that Segway freaking got me 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
i turned my macbook 2012 11 inch into a chromebook recently and runs significantly better than macos did. I love using this laptop now
The intro…… was awesome
its wild that the thinkpad did as well as it did! ive been a big advocate for getting a used thinkpad (though newer than the x220) over a brand new laptop in the 100-300$ price range for a while. Their build quality for the X, T, W, and P lines are amazing, and if the battery is dead after all these years, they tend to be super easy to find cheap new replacements for on places like ebay sense these machines sold in such large quantities to business customers (as well as cheap replacement parts) I have a T540p and a T580 which is my daily driver when i need a laptop. was able to swap out the trackpad and battery real easy, upgrade the ram, and have a super solid laptop for about 650$ CAD all in.
Same... but for windows 10, my recommendation is the one that using 4th Gen Intel or newer (like T440, X240 or E440) i5 or i7, 8GB RAM and SSD storage... That good enough for daily light office work and web browsing
It's*
My friend still uses my old ThinkPad twist. It had a few issues but the power level of it is still awesome.
You mention swapping the battery and doing it on the twist would be harder than find some older devices where you just pull the two tabs in the battery falls out. My friend says he gets about an hour hour and a half of battery life and he mostly plugs into the wall anyways.
The fan did die on it once and we had to replace it.
The only other weird thing that happened was that the device stopped working if a hard drive was plugged in. That's how I found out that it also has an msata drive. No idea why it stopped booting with any drive plugged into the SATA port but We got a 128 gig msided drive and away he went. We actually had windows installed on the 24 GB msata drive that originally came with the machine but having to have a thumb drive plugged in the entire time is pretty annoying.
they're ok, if you can live with the resolution and upgrade internals
@@clydefrosch well there are newer thinkpads than an x220. my roommate just got a T480 for about 300$ iirc and thats a laptop from 2018 shich has a great screen anx upgradability
These intros lately have been amazing
On a Chromebook right now. 32GB of RAM, 4 core CPU. I'm a professional software developer and it's the best experience I have. I make use of separate profiles for isolation, I make use of the Linux env for development.
I would suggest checking out that Linux environment - there are plenty of benchmarking tools that you could use in it. It seems a bit wrong to say "don't buy a Chromebook" instead of "don't install ChromeOS on an unofficial laptop".
Also notably ChromeOS's browser:
a) Lags behind the main version by ~3 weeks
b) Is not strictly the same as a native install. For that you'll need Lacros, which is not released yet.
I also found some of the benchmarks to be not very compelling. These results are largely within noise range - 1.41 vs 1.28 is a difference I'd be just as likely to attribute to a tiny temperature gap or a minor v8 update.
Thanks to this video, I have (somewhat) successfully turned my Lenovo Flex 15 into a Chromebook.
It came with Windows 10, I took the risk of upgrading it to Windows 11 and subsequently accidentally leaving less than 15 GB on my hard drive. Needless to say my laptop didn't like this and would stay functional for about 5 minutes before recovery mode kicked in.
I bought a new laptop and relegated this one to the basement. After a few months of hibernation, it seemed to be doing better, but chrome truly breathed new life into it. It has now become my parents' choice laptop for streaming to their TV (a high honour), and I think it will become my go-to "light work" laptop.
I can't help but notice you marked Jamie's ThinkPad as an X220 at 11:15, when it is in fact an X230, it's both on the bezel, and instantly noticeable by the, subjectively speaking, worse keyboard it also has... Along with the I/O being slightly different. With all this, Jamie himself also refers to it as an X230 at 1:55, I guess an editor made a tiny mistake. Just couldn't help not pointing it out...
Ah.... r/thinkpad spills the beans.
Also an editing error at 1:07
Fun fact: I have an actual good X220 keyboard, new in box to install in it. I bought it 8 years ago and never got around to the swap. 😂
unpopular opinion: the old keyboards look nicer but the new ones feel better for typing, especially 40 series and up
I'd be interested to see how this compares to a Linux distro. A guy I used to work with said he switched to Ubuntu for his wife's old laptop and it performed noticeably better than Windows.
Many Linux distros can breathe new life into old PCs. Some bigger distros can actually be pretty intensive too, but I used Linux Mint Debian Edition on an old PC and it only used about 600 MB of RAM! It really is like making an old PC new again! That said, I’d recommend trying it out first, and if the hardware is very old or underpowered you may want a minimalist distro like Puppy Linux that is meant to run on minimal hardware.
Chrome OS is a GNU+Linux distro, like Ubuntu. In fact, the first versions of Chrome OS was based on Ubuntu. ChromeOS still uses some components from Ubuntu, but of course, the browser is the window system, which makes it unique.
Using Manjaro. Very happy
@@Batwam0: It was originally based on Ubuntu, yes and then rebased on Gentoo. Still uses components from Ubuntu, such as Upstart.
@@andmicbro1 Man I am rocking Linux Mint XFCE for my primary driver as Windows 10 eats up RAM. I code Laravel and VueJS, and when doing local development on Windows 10, it eats RAM that I cannot even preview the result at the browser (as Windows 10 already take some RAM up). Dualbooting to Linux Mint XFCE, it goes as light as a feather, I can code + run dev both Laravel (On Atom) and VueJS (On VSCODE), while opening opera, watching youtube, opening google docs, sheets, some API docs, and stackoverflow haha (Lenovo IdeaPad 3 with Ryzen 7 5700U + 8GB DDR4 Soldered RAM as the culprit. I know the CPU is decent, but the RAM is the limit)
if you want to install chrome os on a macbook you need first to install cloudready and then from cloud ready update to chrome OS. that worked for my old mac mini from 2011
This video is essentially a really good advertisement for the Lenovo Thinkpad. They clearly hold up over 10 years.
10:14 wrong, it's the CLIT
Centrally
Located
Interface
Tool
Every time LTT has FreshBooks Ad
"I guess you're not an accountant"
*death stare in chartered accountant*
You guys need to know this. Chrome OS can run regular Linux desktop applications that use the Wayland windowing system. This includes all Linux apps that use the GTK GUI library, which is most of them. Therefore, it may be possible to run apps Blender on a Chromebook, but you have to build the app from source yourself so that you can rebuild the dependencies as static libraries that can be incorporated into the application binary.
A really interesting summary. I did actually install flex on an older HP laptop a couple of months ago, and for younger kids it’s great especially for Google classroom and docs etc. And it runs really fast.
I did the same with endless os on one laptop for my younger siblings I converted to a desktop, and even xbuntu on a another 2011 hp laptop I had from when I was a kid for them to play on.
I've used X200s-X230s with Win 10, 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a boot SSD and found them to be absolutely fantastic machines.
Really glad it did so well, especially since the thumbnail made it seem that the thinkpad wouldn't hold up well.
well, i will stick to manjaro or linux mint / lubunto way better compatiblity, great battery life (with a little apt install) really easy to install apps. and overall has almost every feature that i would like in a toaster pc.
i used it on my old 2006 dell, with core 2 duo, 2 gb of ram, and a slow hdd, and it did boot really fast (most of the time), cannot say about battery life since it died back in 2010, but it did give a "humf" to it.
would be nice to see a comparison between installing those systems and chrome os to old systems.
I agree. My HP EliteDesk has a Gen.4 Core i5 and is not compatible with Windows 11 in an easy way. I also have a Lenovo ThinkCentre with a Core 2 Duo and I am running some form of Ubuntu on it. The comparison between "Alt+OS" from Windows or Chrome would be neat to see.
That intro was wonderful, lol
Can confirm the SSD is the biggest upgrade you can make to an older computer. The old workstation (its some Dell SFF desktop) I use as a media center has had its Core i3 replaced with an i5 I had, and the ram upgraded from 4 to 8 GBs, All that and a distro of Linux started up pretty slowly on a mechanical HDD, at least compared to Windows 10 on an SSD (never actually timed it, but for sure under 20 seconds).
The intro was amazing 😂
Loved it
That Chrome OS meme is HILARIOUS! I cackled! Recovering from fever, so really needed that! Thank you! X'D
Your intro looks like you are a part of RGBTQ community
ye
I just urged my uncle to buy a Chromebook. Thank you for the information in this video because now I realize it wasn't a mistake. Mislabeled keys and the potential to not have basics like volume controls work correctly would have just confused him. We could have saved some money but in the end it would have been more hassle to convert his old Windows laptop. Besides we would have likely needed to buy an SSD to speed things up and to preserve his original drive in case he wants Windows back for some reason.
yeah but you could have just put linux instead and then if he wanted to he could use it as a real computer if he really wanted to or at least be able to put pictures on it
If he can't even figure out how to set the volume, I don't think a Linux distro would have helped, unfortunately. You vastly overestimate the average user's tech savviness and willingness to learn.
you should have just bought a new windows laptop
@@robotortoise again theirs nothing to learn, the web browser is already installed and pinned to the task bar, it even has libre office which is basically a open source Microsoft office also preinstalled and offline which cannot be said about chrome, linux has everything chrome OS has to offer and much more, there is absolutely no reason to use chrome OS unless you want to open yourself up to spyware and even viruses now since all the normies are getting chromebooks. and on top of all that, chromebooks are much more expensive than just buying a used laptop. I bought my laptop that's an I7 16gb of ram with a 120gb SSD for 120$, a third the price of a used chromebook, it has linux on it and I'm able to use it as a real computer and not just limited to a webbrowser
@@0w3nn or a used one, you can save a lot buying an older computer and will probably end up with better specs and even repairbility
The right path for an old laptop, especially a ThinkPad is to install Linux on it
No ifs or buts whatsoever
ThinkPad + Arch
Name a more iconic duo, I'll wait
tbh with yall just having released a video on that slimmed down Windows version I think this video could have hugely benefited from a comparison between ChromeOS Flex, regular Windows/OSX, that slim windows version and some light Linux distro. So the peeps actually watching it for the hard recommendations and not just entertainment get way more value out of it
Intro had solid team rocket energy from pokemon
A few months ago I put flex on an old i5 ultrabook thing I had laying around because it had a great screen and my mom needed a new laptop + she uses Google, YT, and Android at a basic level already.
It already had an Samsung pro SSD and 16gb of ram, so it's utter overkill, but the UX and simplicity was the reason I put it on for her.
Avoiding ewaste for longer 🐱
ThinkPad X230 once again proving to be a beast of a used daily driver.
Got mine for almost 5 years ago for cheap, and with a ram upgrade and an SSD, and it's still chugging along just fine!
My ThinPad T61 that I got for 15€ runs Ubuntu 22.04LTS perfectly fine 💪😎
Man said chrome curious... i nearly spat out my tea 😂
9:26 - You mentioned Horst's laptop was due to a slow HDD, there was a b-roll footage of an SSD being the replacement drive.
Was an SSD used for the 1 minute boot time or was it using the original hard drive?
Was the original boot time on an old installation with files dotted around the hard drive or a clean formatted install?
0:05 im convinced this is Dennis Liao's doing
😂