Review: Chrome OS Flow
Posted on 16. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Reviews
I’ve finally gotten Chrome OS Flow downloaded, imaged to a USB stick and running on a machine. It took some time, as when I started the download yesterday morning I came back later in the day only to find that less than half of the archive for the build had been downloaded before it petered out. Hexxeh noted this in his Twitter account, so this must be a widespread outage that occurred. Once I finally got the download finished in the wee hours, I couldn’t get it to run on any of my machines – probably because I wasn’t actually awake anymore.
The best part of this new version that I found was that it now can store your wireless settings. That’s helpful, because now you can jump right into whatever you need to do once you get logged in. In the past, you would get some ugly “cannot connect” pages every boot, but once you configure your network from the upper right hand corner for the first time, it is good to go.
For whatever reason, I was only able to use the facepunch/facepunch login to get into Flow. Attempting to use my own Google account would not work. Thanks to a commenter, I found out that a quirk to Flow requires me to login using a wired connection using my account, and then after that it is cached. Still dealing with beta, and that’s how it goes.
Flash is working on this one, and the sound is working too. The power indicator is also functional, although I never really had an issue with it in past builds. I busted out some tunes on Lala, and I was excited. This is starting to look like something I could use on one of my machines on a regular basis. YouTube videos ran fine, and I think Hexxeh had to spend quite a bit of time getting the Nvidia hardware to work correctly for Flow in order to get codecs to run.
I didn’t see any elements of customizable windows for the applications that had been previewed via a screenshot at first just a week ago. Hexxeh tossed a comment on this post saying it does work, by clicking on the Chromium logo in the upper left and it would pop up. It does work now, and you can get access to many web apps that are already out there. I had some problems moving icons around, but I’m still happy with the fact that these pseudo-bookmarks work to get me to places like Facebook, Google Docs and status updates for Flow.
There are added network preferences in the options menu, among a few other tidbits that have been changed. However, I don’t want to write too much, as this is still an early release and these things are subject to change. I know Hexxeh spent a lot of time trying to get this working, and he is planning on using his new auto-update system to work out any bugs and system changes that there may be. So go ahead and download this, try it out. The resources are on Hexxeh’s site, and include a bug tracker, so check it out right here.
UPDATE: I have modified this article based on the comments below. Feel free to offer your own. I have also found that Extensions do not work.
2ND UPDATE: Extensions do work, you have to hit Enter through the menus when asked if you want to install the extension instead of using your mouse. Its kind of quirky, but at least they are working.
17 Responses to “Review: Chrome OS Flow”
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chrome story
17. Feb, 2010
why isn’t google pushing more updates ? dev builds are not even close to what they demoed .. why are they behaving like Apple now ?
korben
17. Feb, 2010
To use your personnal login on the startup, you have to use an ethernet connection the first time, then it’s gonna work wirelessly.
Hexxeh
17. Feb, 2010
The app menu feature was in, it’s on the first tab from the left.
Daniel Cawrey
17. Feb, 2010
Thanks for the comments.. the post will be updated reflecting these things.
Cody
18. Feb, 2010
Extensions worked on mine. What problem are you getting?
Daniel Cawrey
18. Feb, 2010
I’ve tried several different extensions, but I am unable to confirm the install when the pop-up opens. Also, I get a Content Browser that comes up in the lower left hand corner. chrome://filebrowse/#/home/chronos/Downloads
Chrome OS Flow Released | thechromesource - Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources
19. Feb, 2010
[...] Review: Chrome OS Flow [...]
Cody
22. Feb, 2010
When you do that, close the page and try to install it again. You should get the pop-up when you try to install it a second time.
Name
26. Feb, 2010
What wireless card are you using? Any clues what’s supported?
Daniel Cawrey
26. Feb, 2010
I’m using an Intel wireless card – it works, you just have to do your initial login with a wired ethernet connection and then you’re good.
You can see a good compatibility list at the wiki here:
http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/wiki/doku.php?id=laptop_compatibility_list&s=wireless
Scott
17. Apr, 2010
Thanks for updating on the extensions. I’ve been searching around for builds that have working extensions. Using Chrome for Win 7 right now and downloading Flow right now too.
Tried downloading it earlier and the speed slowly decreased until i was only getting 50kB/sec, but it’s still doing it. Idk. I’ll just cope with it.
linctus
11. May, 2010
1) some extentions installed, but some not.
2) save link as by right click doesn’t work, though you can left click the link and it will be downloaded to Download folder.
3) my mouse doesn’t work after boot, I have to plug it out and in again.
4) it’s a really, really bad-ass OS, loving it.
lenovo X61, installed in hdd coz I don’t even have a usb stick bigger than 2G in hand!
Daniel Cawrey
12. May, 2010
It has its quirks, but there is a lot of potential.
Name
05. Jun, 2010
In Windows, I am using PeaZip and can’t extract the .gz file, cause there is an error. Although, the extracted .tar file is there… When I try to extract the .tar, it asks for password… Should I try using another archive manager
Name
05. Jun, 2010
Also, I wish it would deserve it, because in Chromium Diet, this OS, didn’t recognize the mouse, so I had to work with that stupid touch pad….
Daniel Cawrey
10. Jun, 2010
Just use a different one, I’ve not had a problem with this.
John Locke
12. Jun, 2010
The GMAIL is not working. Error 107. Anybody else is getting this error? Hotmail worked fine