Switcher 2026: ChromeOS and Chromebooks for the Win ⭐️

While my recent ChromeOS Flex experience was lacking, ChromeOS is a surprisingly strong contender depending on your needs and expectations. Which is interesting given all the uncertainty around ChromeOS and Chromebooks these days. So let’s start with that.

📜 A little history

It may be difficult to believe, but Google announced the Chrome OS open source project over 15 years ago, in November 2009, a few months after it initially revealed that it was creating this platform. As difficult, Google (and Alphabet) CEO Sundar Pichai, then a Google vice president of Chrome, was the person who headlined the launch event and he likes a child compared to today. But Google (and, arguably, Pichai) was riding a wave thanks to the launch of the Chrome web browser just 14 months before this event, which was perhaps most notable for its performance when compared to the then market leaders, Internet Explorer and Firefox.

That was the point, definitely: Google created Chrome specifically because it couldn’t trust its competitors to meet its needs as the web transitioned from displaying content to being a full-featured application platform. But where Chrome was a shot at other web browsers, Chrome OS–as it was called then, now it’s ChromeOS–was Google’s take on a desktop OS, one that would initially run on netbooks, later renamed to Chromebooks. Like so much that Google does, ChromeOS was quirky–one might say “Googley”–and quite different from established desktop OSes like Windows and Mac OS X.

And yes, this really was the netbook era. But it was also a time when developers, especially on Windows, were abandoning native apps specific to only a single desktop OS to focus on web apps. This new breed of apps included such things as Amazon, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course Google’s apps, like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Maps. So Chrome OS would be super-fast but also small and lightweight, making it far more responsive and usable on low-end, netbook-like hardware. It would be dramatically simpler than Windows and Mac OS X, too, which would be appealing to consumers, Google felt, but also to those managing environments in education and business because this simplicity was extended to the system’s security and management capabilities.

Under the covers, ChromeOS was and still is based on a lightweight Linux variant, but it’s not really a Linux distribution per se, and there is no native app platform beyond the web. Aside from a small collection of built-in apps, Chrome OS was designed to run only web applications natively using a full-featured Chrome web browser that helps it bridge the mobile world of smartphones and tablets with the desktop OS world dominated by Windows. But since the initial announcement, Google has added two key capabilities that make this platform much more interesting, especially to those who find web apps too limiting: Today, it can run Android apps and, after a separate in-box install, Linux desktop and command line apps.

While it’s proven to be popular in cash-strapped educational institutions because of its incredible security and reliability, ChromeOS has never really found a mainstream audience despite Google’s backing and many years of evolution. In more recent years, Google expanded ChromeOS by acquiring a third party company/solution called CloudReady and turning it into Chrome OS Flex. It has created a specification for so-called Chromebook Plus devices with more powerful processors, more RAM and storage, and other capabilities that are missing in consumer- and education-class Chromebooks. And now, we’re learning that Chromebooks may soon be augmented and then replaced by a coming generation of Android-based laptops, further confusing matters.

So we’re in a weird place as I write this. But I’ve been fascinated by this platform since Google first announced it, and if you’ve kind of forgotten what all the fuss was about when this was just getting off the ground, I strongly recommend (re)watching the Chrome OS open source project announcement video. It’s a surprisingly technical discussion and explanation of Google’s thinking at the time. And my God, does it make sense.

But do ChromeOS and the Chromebooks that run it make sense here in 2026? To find out, I recently purchased an inexpensive Chromebook here in Mexico because my experiences with ChromeOS Flex on existing laptops was surprisingly lackluster. I also have at least one Chromebook Plus device, though that’s back in Pennsylvania. Which is fine, I wanted to get a good idea of where the base Chrome OS experience is at.

And here’s what’s odd given all the uncertainty. It’s in a good place.

👬 Audiences and use cases

ChromeOS is suitable for just about anyone, from kids and students to professionals and any other individual user. The simple management capabilities I reference above also make ChromeOS interesting in education, business, and government, but I’m sticking to the single user focus here.

Speaking of which, the original positioning for ChromeOS and the devices that would become known as Chromebooks was as a companion device. Windows and the Mac, and even Linux when you think about it, come out of eras in which PCs were not the “center” of one’s personal computing experience, they were all of it. But with its web and mobile focus, Google rethought what a desktop OS could be, and it did so quite early on. Today, we accept that most people spend most of their time “computing”–interacting with personal technology–on phones, while larger devices like tablets and laptops are secondary or in some cases not even necessary (or, in certain markets, available).

This feels obvious today, and while this shift will only be truly complete when people of my generation and older retire or die, it’s already a reality for many. In this Switcher series, I’m more interested in using whatever platforms as alternatives to Windows, but the secondary use case, the companion device approach, is an important consideration. Even people like me, as we get older and begin rethinking or eliminating certain workflows, can find the simplicity of ChromeOS to be quite appealing. Others will of course simply find it to be too limiting.

I suspect that a Chromebook would work for many who might believe otherwise, either because they’re technical or have years or decades of experience with the computer system they already use. This is understandable, but in addition to the standard companion device scenarios, ChromeOS can work for some surprising audiences. It includes the Google Play Store and Android app compatibility, so you can play Android games but on a bigger screen. It includes Linux compatibility, so you can run other desktop apps and, perhaps more to the point, engage in software development through apps like Visual Studio Code.

In any event, all you can do is think about it and then try it, which is partially problematic because the only way to experience real ChromeOS is to buy a Chromebook or other ChromeOS-based device. The workaround here is to try Chrome OS Flex, with the understanding that you won’t get Android app compatibility and may experience some hardware issues.

💰 Acquisition costs

When Google first announced this platform, it presented ChromeOS as an alternative, or choice, that was “fundamentally different” from classic desktop platforms like Windows and macOS. ChromeOS was dramatically simpler than these platforms, and still is. It was secure by default. It would interact with the phone you are already using, assuming of course that it’s an Android phone. It would be sold on new Chromebook devices, laptops that would be small and cheap and netbook-like, but also bigger laptops with a full-sized keyboard and a larger display.

The netbook positioning of that time was not about size, it was about cost. But given the low margin nature of the PC market, it is not at all surprising that PC makers latched onto ChromeOS as a lifeline of sorts that could save them from Microsoft and Windows. Helping matters, Microsoft came out with its Surface line of PCs when it launched Windows 8 and RT in 2012, which meant it was now both partnering and competing with PC makers; this drove any remaining ChromeOS holdouts into Google’s arms.

But the resulting devices were often lackluster. With a few exceptions, including some Google first-party entries that often tried to make a case for a premium (read: expensive) Chromebook experience, most Chromebooks were not just inexpensive, but cheap and underpowered. Here, Google experienced the problem Microsoft was already all too familiar with, that PC makers would ignore its undercut the quality expected by the platform maker and compete with each other on price. Google tried a few generations of premium Pixelbooks and other Chromebooks, and then it introduced Chromebook Plus so that third-party hardware makers would deliver more premium laptops with ChromeOS.

The results are decidedly mixed, but customers do have Chromebooks to choose from at every pricing tier. There are traditional laptop form factor devices, of course, and in different sizes, but also tablet PCs that are basically ChromeOS tablets with a detachable keyboard cover and, in most cases, some form of smartpen capability. And most Chromebooks are x86/x64-based, which isn’t necessarily ideal from a fan noise/uptime perspective, but new Arm-based platforms are helping bring more efficient Chromebooks to market as well.

A basic Chromebook can be incredibly inexpensive and cheap, like the $180 Acer Chromebook 315. But you can also spend almost $1000 on a high-end Chromebook Plus laptop. And there is everything in-between. But thanks to PC makers lowballing their way to profitability and the cash-strapped education market embracing this platform, ChromeOS is often seen as a last resort for the poor and non-technical. That’s not correct or fair, given the more premium experiences out there. However, the perception has harmed this platform for sure.

🔀 Compatibility

While you can experiment with ChromeOS to some degree using ChromeOS Flex, you will need to purchase a new Chromebook to get the real thing. But beyond that need, hardware compatibility is excellent. Here in Mexico, I have a wide range of USB-based peripherals, from USB docks and hubs to external displays, hard disks and SSDs, and whatever else. And it all works fine with the low-end and somewhat underpowered Chromebook that I purchased, as do various Bluetooth devices, including speakers.

The software picture is a bit fuzzier and will depend on your needs and expectations. With any platform shift, there will be some app or service that one relies on that isn’t available elsewhere, and that becomes a blocker. ChromeOS certainly suffers from this problem, given its focus on the web. The addition of Android and Linux app compatibility can help with those “last mile” compatibility problems, but there are many classic desktop apps that are just never going to work on ChromeOS. And so any potential switcher will need to take stock of what they use and then see where things stand on ChromeOS.

Everyone will approach this in their own way, but the general truth here is that ChromeOS is best for those who do much of their work in a web browser already. That’s true for me to some degree: I access email, calendar, and meetings via web apps, and some of the productivity apps I use, like Notion, are web-based and can be accessed that way. There are web versions of the classic Microsoft Office apps, for example.

Aside from Notion, which I actually use in Android app form on ChromeOS, I haven’t found much use for Android app compatibility personally. But with Google advancing that platform to better accommodate big screens like those on Chromebooks, this will be a big deal for many. Also, you can stream individual Android apps from your phone to ChromeOS.

For me and many more technical users, Linux compatibility is perhaps more interesting and in the Switcher sense, the availability of desktop Android apps makes ChromeOS interesting as a very light Linux alternative to Windows. I mentioned Visual Studio Code, and that runs well using ChromeOS’s Linux virtual machine. But my biggest need here is for writing. And therein lies a story.

As many of you may know, I use Typora, a Markdown editor, for writing. Its makers offer native clients on Windows and macOS, both of which are terrific, but there’s also a lesser-known Linux version, too, that can be installed from the command line or via a downloadable package in .deb format. As it turns out, the Linux virtual machine in ChromeOS is compatible with .deb packages, so either method should work.

Should being the operative word here. Timed nicely to me investigating Windows alternatives this year, I’ve had trouble installing Typora in Linux, ChromeOS Flex, and now ChromeOS, the latter two being the most problematic. On Linux, there must have been a glitch of whatever kind a few months back because more often than not I can simply install Typora from whatever app store a given distribution provides. But the issue on ChromeOS was more difficult to diagnose.

Fortunately, I think I finally figured it out: The problem on ChromeOS is tied to some underlying dependencies that a real Linux distribution for whatever reason will automatically apply, allowing Typora to work correctly. On ChromeOS, I have to run the following command line, after installing the Linux VM and before installing Typora, to get this app to work correctly.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y libnss3 libgtk-3-0 libxss1

What I’ve found is that after doing this, I can then install Typora from the command line (using sudo apt install typora) or by downloading that .deb file. And then it works fine. Excellent.

It’s highly likely that almost anyone will need to figure out at least a few app alternatives. The web is brimming with advice on this, but some of the bigger offenders are creative apps, where one might have to use a web-based app like Photopea instead of Adobe Photoshop Elements or Affinity, or a web-based video editor like Clipchamp (which I use on Windows anyway), or perhaps an Android alternative like CapCut.

On the services end, ChromeOS offers a compelling Google Drive integration that works much like it does on Windows or the Mac. You can sync (“back up”) individual folders or files so that they’re available offline, for example. But if you use OneDrive, you can at least install a OneDrive connector that lets you access your OneDrive storage when you’re online, similar to how it works on Linux. This is most helpful.

You can also access network shares normally from the Files app in ChromeOS, so I can see the shares on my local NAS and access whatever files I have there when I’m online as well.

🙌 Usage highs and lows

If you do watch that 2009 ChromeOS announcement video referenced above, you’ll see that Google was at that time not sure what the ChromeOS user interface would look like. The demos it provided suggested it would be just the web browser, with tabs and panels accommodating the system-level interfaces too. But that’s not what ChromeOS became: Instead, Google provides a familiar desktop interface with a Start button, Start menu, Taskbar, and desktop elements that any Windows user will understand immediately. Even the learning curve for macOS is more daunting than this.

(And before anyone grumbles about Google not having any original ideas or whatever, please understand that this copying is bidirectional. The Quick Settings interface in Windows 11 was lifted directly from ChromeOS, for example. Good ideas are good ideas and familiarity is helpful for any switcher.)

This mostly works well. ChromeOS works as expected, windows can be resized, moved, and maximized, and positioned next to each other in obvious ways. Settings are easily accessible via a Quick Settings interface and then a fuller Settings app that looks much like the settings UI in Chrome, of course.

You can tap the “G” key on the keyboard, in the same spot as Start on a Windows laptop, and access the ChromeOS equivalent of Start. There’s a new “+” key in place of the Caps Lock key that opens a search panel.

My only real complaints here are tied to ChromeOS and Linux integration, and both are tied to the respective file systems. That is, the ChromeOS and Linux file systems are separate, thanks to the sandboxed nature of the Linux VM.

Google provides a single “Linux files” entry point in the Files app that maps to your home folder in Linux (/home/Paul in my case), and that gives you an entry point to copy files back and forth. But that can be tedious, too: It would be preferable to have full access to the Linux file system from Files so I can do things like install Typora themes and fonts more easily. Instead, this requires some command line knowledge, a weird bit of complexity in this sea of simplicity. Perhaps I should simply install an Android file management app.

Worse, you can’t set a Linux app (like Typora) as the default for a file type in the Files app, nor can you “Open with” documents using a Linux app. So when I try to open a Markdown file from the Files app, my choices include whatever web or Android-based apps that are compatible and not the one I wish to use.

🏆 Ecosystem benefits

As part of the broader Google ecosystem, which includes not just Android and Google Play but also Gemini, Google Home, Google Docs/Workspace, and everything else, ChromeOS will be particularly appealing for certain users. Like Windows 11, it offers smartphone integration, in this case specifically for Android phones, through a Phone Hub app that provides automatic tethering, unlock integration, and access to recent Chrome tabs, documents, notifications, and more, in addition to the aforementioned apps streaming capability.

👍 Conclusions

ChromeOS is surprisingly versatile and is useful to broad range of users. The only major downside here is the uncertain future of the platform and whether it will soon be replaced by Android-based laptops that will share many similarities with ChromeOS but not provide a full-featured desktop Chrome browser experience (unless Google is going to surprise us with that). The simplicity, reliability, and automatic security inherent to this platform should be appealing to just about anyone, and Android and Linux app compatibility will help many if not most bridge the web app compatibility gaps. It’s perhaps too easy to mock ChromeOS and the Chromebooks that run it, at least in more technical circles. But as Apple observed in its first Apple II marketing materials, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. That applies nicely to ChromeOS.

Pros

✔️ Simple, secure, and reliable

✔️ Desktop version of Chrome is versatile and powerful

✔️ Familiar desktop experience for those coming from Windows

✔️ Android app compatibility

✔️ Linux app compatibility

✔️ Can connect OneDrive to Files

Cons

❌ The future of this platform is uncertain

❌ Some complexities associated with Linux

❌ Requires a new device purchase for the full experience