Chromium OS

Chromium OS is an open-source project that aims to build an operating system that provides a fast, simple, and more secure computing experience for people who spend most of their time on the web.

All downloads are located at https://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/. This will be updated daily where builds compile succcessfully..

Build Instructions for USB

  • Linux
    1. Use p7zip to extract the IMG file from the downloaded file.
    2. At the shell, run the following (where sdX is your USB stick and ChromeOS.img is the path to the IMG file you extracted):
      dd if=ChromeOS.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M
    3. Boot from USB stick
  • Windows
    1. Use 7zip to extract IMG file from the downloaded file.
    2. Use Win32 Image Writer, then select the IMG file and select the USB device from the menu.
    3. Click on “Write”.
    4. Boot from USB stick

All builds based on amd64 and ARM generic board.

If you want to install to your hard drive, follow the instructions here and here. Heed the warnings noted in the links!

Please note: there is a new behaviour with the chronos user password. The password has been removed from build R55-8777 onward and will continue to be removed for better overall security. Older builds have the password of ‘password’.
This means you need to use ‘chromeos-setdevpasswd’ from either shell or console to set your own password from build R55-8777 onwards.

By default, this also disables SSH access so if you also need this level of access, you will need to set a separate password using ‘sudo passwd chronos’. This allows the password for dev access and SSH access to remain separate if needed.

You can also just set a password using ‘sudo passwd chronos’ and this will allow for both dev and SSH access if you need to keep them the same. Do not use ‘chromeos-setdevpasswd’ if you want to keep the passwords the same.

Once installed, you can update from the Dev Server noted here.

Thanks to The Chromium Projects

Chromium OS GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE




2,715 thoughts on “Chromium OS”

  1. Thank you very much for this project! 🙂

    I’ll be testing Cx82OS_R60_9592B_Special on an Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 Gb RAM ZORIN OS Desktop, purchased back in 2015. The processor supports x64 Bits, but since it goes already slow on ZORIN OS, I will give it a shot with the 32 bits version.

    Soon updating you here on my brand new Chromium OS!

      1. same here …touchpad works weirdly and wifi card doesn’t work.

        I will try x86 build later in my old laptop and see how it works out.

  2. I am burning the image on a 32GB USB stock. I get many partitions on the stick. Is that normal? The laptop is not recognizing it as a bootable volume after the burn. Any assistance is appreciated.

  3. Just downloaded the latest Special build. I extract it, and I notice that it’s a gigantic 8.14 GB ISO. And I have one question: does this work on 8 GB USB sticks (to be more specific, 7.2 GB)? And how?

  4. I apologize if this has been asked already, but I was unable to find it. Internet searches haven’t been much help either.

    Do these builds support PPAPI Flash? Currently using several Windows-now-Chromiumbooks in a school environment and have had no luck getting Flash content to work.

    Thanks for any help!

  5. Every Image I downloading and and booting from usb it het stucking on the ‘system was repairing itself.Please wait..’.
    How to fix it ?
    Motherboard-Gigabyte
    CPU-Intel pentium
    Ram-4GB
    Graphics-Nvidia
    Usb-Sony 2.0 16Gb

  6. Recently found this site. Would like to try and resurrect my old dell latitude 2110. Can someone tell me if device works and which build would be suggested? Thank you.

  7. Hello arnold,
    I am looking to upgrade my internal wireless card of my notebook asus n56vj for getting ac speeds and 5Ghz band.

    current h/w: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) which actually works with your builds.

    Planning to purchase: Intel 3160 Dual Band Wireless AC + Bluetooth Mini PCIe card Supports 2.4 and 5Ghz B/G/N/AC Bands

    https://www.amazon.com/Intel-3160-Wireless-Bluetooth-Supports/dp/B00IOS19E6/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1506239879&sr=1-4&keywords=notebook+wireless+card+bluetooth+5

    Could you let me know, if the replacement will work as well with your builds or not..
    and in general, which is more supported intel based or Qualcomm based wireless.
    Thanks always..

  8. Hey Arnold. When running from USB, the usb memory access is permanent. Is this chromium caching? Can it be disabled? I’m afraid the USB will wear out fast.

  9. I’m using an Asus Zenbook UX305FA. The daily build boots and for about a minute the wifi works. However, the wifi stops working before it completes the initial setup part and I can never get past it. Generally, it works long enough for me to locate my access point and start entering the password, but dies before I can finish. Wifi is Intel 7265.

    The special build doesn’t boot past the logo screen.

    My primary OS is Ubuntu so I know there’s stable wifi support available 🙂

    1. Try plugging and unplugging a wired connection to see if the wireless comes back up again. It sounds like you have fallen foul of the manager daemon switching off wireless!

  10. Hey man, It’s been 12 hours of my struggling here…I got a chrome book (hp) and I went onto this chrome recovery app, but it this time stuck at writing, so I decided to try other bodies, like your website. I downloaded the most recent os to get my CB back to life, but what actually happens is that once i burn the image and i write it onto my usb stick (16gigs) (formatted to fat32 or what so ever), It creates so many partitions (12 ish as written above) and it straight says it needs formatting if i want to us it, so I put it into my chrome book and it says, no OS on the USB Device.. what can I do? I swear to god, if you help me i donate you a few pints 🙂

    Thanks !

  11. Hello Arnold, could you help me, please?
    I’m trying to install chromium os, I have tried to from most recent to oldest, but I’ve only managed to get to the icon of chromium.
    I have a desktop computer with a 64-bit Gygabit motherboard, AMD Athlon processor, 2 GB RAM and 250 GB hard drive.
    I tried with the daily and weekly builds, but I had no luck. At this time i am starting to try again with the special builds, I used 2 but without success.
    Also try using CloudReady, I managed to finish the installation, but I cannot connect to the internet, or by ethernet and wifi (as it does not detect my USB device).
    Do you have any recommendations?

    1. Sounds like you may have one of the devices that just wont play with Chromium OS. If you have tried both CloudReady and my builds, its unlikely you will get a build to to work.

  12. Hi Arnold,

    First of all, Great job for doing all this, its brilliant work and i have now rolled this out to alot of laptops with no issue but
    I am stuck big time on some of my HP’s- all of them are AMD E2- 1800 APU with Radeon Graphics, and seem to have graphics driver issues. (loads chromium splash screen and then freezes)
    I’ve tried most of the images on the special and weekly builds, all pretty much have the same issue.
    I tried Cloudready which worked, so i eliminated hardware compatibility.
    Do have any plan to include these in your next build?
    or if you know which image works for this hardware, i would love to know.

    Thanks

  13. Just installed Cx86OS_R60-9592.B-Special.7z on a Packard Bell laptop from 2008. works perfectly. You did an amazing job with the latest builds. The laptop is as new. Workable for sure. Al the Google apps I tested, and working in the cloud with this old laptop is not a punishment.

    The wireless mouse works, the touchpad not. No big deal.

    Thanks

  14. Arnold a (hopefully) quick question. I’m struggling to enable Kiosk mode with your nightly build. I try the standard Ctrl-Alt-K and get nothing. Any ideas? Thanks!

  15. Has there been a change in the none EFI boot process as both R62 Vanilla and Special fail to start the boot process on my 8 year old Dell Inspiron. The Syslinux boot text appears on screen then the process immediately stops and activity LED on the USB device goes out. Previous versions R58 & R60 boot OK. The USB device boots OK in a EFI laptop but stops at the Chromium splash screen.

      1. The video controller is Intel GMA X4500HD according to the spec in the service manual and the manufacture date is 2009. I thought that if the video card was not supported boot stopped at the splash screen. In this case boot activity lasts about 2 seconds.

  16. How do I delete myself from Flint OS? I suppose, it is your creation. I have flashed it into a USB stick. I would like it to not ask to sign in to Google, when starting up. So, anyone else can also use it.

  17. Hello, I am downloading the image file and flashing to a USB Drive with Win32 Disk Imager, but, when I boot it says no OS is found on the drive. What am I doing wrong? I am using an old Del XPS 13 with a second gen I5 processor and installing the 64bit version of the OS. It partions the USB drive into multiple drives and does not want to boot off the drive.

  18. – Is Google Drive Sync (from the Files app) working on the daily/weekly builds?
    – What do you mean by supporting the Spelling API? Does it have anything to do with spellcheck, and will I lost that feature on the daily/weekly builds?
    – What kernel currently do those builds run on?
    – What other functionality will I lose on those daily/weekly builds?

    1. No google drive on the daily/weekly
      Spelling API is spellcheck. You will lose that on daily/weekly
      4.4 kernel
      Certain kernel configs, and network drivers are removed on the daily/weekly

  19. I’m using the v58 build now, while waiting for Intel Celeron graphics support on the next build (right Arnold?), but OTA updates are still not working now. Is the v58 OTA offline or what? (I tried the weekly build (11/12) but OTAs to 11/19 haven’t worked either….)
    Give me more on how OTA updates work with each build so I’ll understand why it’ll say it’s up-to-date when it no longer is.

  20. Hi Arnold, I’m trying the latest special build but it only shows the Chromium logo and can’t go further. My system has Intel HD 5500 graphics and UEFI mode (no legacy support).
    As far as I know the Linux kernel 4.4 supports Broadwell graphics just fine… Do you know what’s causing the issue?

      1. Okay, I tried again, and I will tell you what happened. Originally I had the R58 build installed on a Dell Optiplex 780 USFF, and it worked fine. Then I upgraded it to the R62 build using the “update” feature, and it wrecked the system, which means I lost the files I had stored on it. They are all encrypted, so there was no way of getting them back. Then I installed the R62 build on a USB stick, and tried to install it on the same machine from the USB, and it wouldn’t boot up, just got a blank screen. Since then, I have tried the R62 build on a Dell Optiplex 790, Optiplex 7010, and Optiplex 9020 (all USFF), and it worked on all of those; but for some reason it no longer supports Optiplex 780, which is bad, because it is a perfectly good machine, and there is no reason why it should not be supported. If they are not going to support 780 today, what guarantee is there that they will continue to support 790, 7010, 9020, and the others later on?

        I have two Optiplex 780 machines. I picked them up on eBay very cheap. When I tried it on the other one, it wouldn’t install on that one either; but this time an interesting error message appeared on the screen which said this:

        “The current input timing is not supported by the monitor display. Please change your input timing to 1280X1024@60Hz or any other monitor listed timing as per the monitor specification.”

        I should add that the monitor is the same as the one I had used with the other machines that worked. Anyways, I hope that they will fix the problem, because my Optiplex 780 is a perfectly good machine and adequate for the task, and there is no reason why it should not be supported.

        Another thing you might like to know is that the WiFi is still not working on the R62 build with my Realtek USB WiFi dongle. I had to use a wired connection to make it work.

  21. Hi, Arnold
    I am using an HP stream 11 d070 stream notebook 2 Gb, 32 Gb flash storage. It has a broadcomm network- adapter for wifi but no lan-connectorpoint

    I have the same issue as many: wifi won’t work.
    (installed newest special camd64OS_R62.9901.B)
    Start-up from USB works but at adding a wifi-network I repeatedly inserted SSID & password but it does not accept and halts.

    Any idea to overcome ?

  22. Hi,
    Just trying to install Cx86OS_R60-9592.B-Special . Does it have to be either 8GB or 16GB usb drive as I tried 8GB and the dd command failed to complete due to insufficient storage. I didn’t have 16GB handy so i tried 64GB usb. The dd command finished but when booted the usb not getting recognized? Any hint??

  23. Dear Arnold. I am a simple user of one of your Chromium packages and I am extremely pleased with it. It has given a new lease of life to my old PC. I wanted to thank you for the amazing job you have done for free or for a small contribution. You are a talented developper, You have a heart of gold and a true sense of community. I wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your loved ones. God bless you !

  24. Hello. I installed one of the special Chrome OS builds some months ago and now I would like to switch to Neverware’s CloudReady because of Widevine support. However, when I plug my bootable USB drive and try to boot my HP Pavilion x360, it says that the file type is unknown. Can I fix that or maybe install Widevine on the build I’m currently using?

      1. Thanks, Arnold. It was in fact a problem with the USB. About Widevine, I’ve once tried installing it to no avail. Would you be kind enough to share a link to a tutorial or something similar? It would surely be appreciated.
        Anyway, thank you again and happy holidays!

  25. Hey my rtl8723be device is not working with the special builds and I can’t seem to get emerge working. Is there a driver or way you could provide to get this to work?

  26. Hello. I may be migrating for to Chrome OS and thought I would give this a try beforehand. Is there an iso available to boot into VirtualBox? Thank you

      1. Hi. First thank u for ur builds. I installed it on acerASPIREONE and worked prefect. But I am also tried to run it on virtualbox and because of virtualbox has no option to load img files format. after many researches on google I found a way to convert it to vdi format through virtualboxManager command line. I cloud boot, but after booting its just halt on this message
        https://drive.google.com/file/d/164TWyfMgh0GTle7xmC3_dD9msPfLzM0f/view?usp=sharing

        So, I counted solved the problem farther!

  27. Hello! I want the chromium os to work on my computer ARM. I mount the image on the microSD, insert it into the Raspberry Pi 3, turn it on, but neither of which happens, I waited a long time. Maybe you need a special build? Please help!

  28. Hi Arnoldthebat, why my question is deleted?
    I want to try an image on my Acer chromebook 13 (c810,uses TEGRA K1).Thanks.

  29. hello i have been working on dual booting this with linux. i have it working even with mbr instead of gpt. but is there a kernel cmd line option for setting STATE partition. as at preassent it has to be sda1.

    thank Chris

  30. I tried CARMOS-20180207010101.img.7z and CARMOS-20180206010101.img.7z both fails to boot. Close inspection shows that EFI-SYSTEM is empty.

    Any idea which is a working version ?

  31. After installing chromium OS, When at the bios or on boot there are 5 options : local image a local image b verified image A verified image B and alternate boot, basically the GNU GRUB is there a way to remove that and just boot to 1.

  32. I do not know how to enable play store on the newest build here. Can you please help. It keeps saying to sign in again and update but there is not an update. Please help. I want to play minecraft pe.

  33. Hi Arnold,

    I’m on an Asus zenbook 3 and the keyboard led is not turning on with either fn and f7 or alt and f7. Am I missing anything? I can sudo cat /sys/class/intel_backlight/Asus::kdb_led to force it on.

    Thank you

    Jeremy

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