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
- Use p7zip to extract the IMG file from the downloaded file.
- 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 - Boot from USB stick
- Windows
- Use 7zip to extract IMG file from the downloaded file.
- Use Win32 Image Writer, then select the IMG file and select the USB device from the menu.
- Click on “Write”.
- 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
Immediate Problem
I used the Windows directions to make a usb image from Cx86OS-20140130010102.img. I tried it on a dell latitude 3330 and got a message “Invalid Partition Table” when trying to boot from the usb.
Long Range Problem
Previously these 3330’s were purchased with Ubuntu. However, the state of Colorado changed specs for their online testing and will no longer support our 315 Ubuntu machines for the tests our school has to do. they do support Chrome OS. We asked about Chromium and they said it is the same thing. Am I wrong that Chromium is built from Ubuntu? Any ideas?
Hi
Its built from Gentoo
Thanks for all of your hard work! I’ve tried lots of different builds and yours comes the closest to working for me. I’m a teacher sitting on a bunch of 7 year old macbooks. I’m having trouble with the wireless and trackpad drivers (I cant get past the initial network screen.) Do you have any advice as to how I could get this to work? I’d love to load Chromium on these machines.
Hi
Try other options noted on this website and also Google as needed. There’s lots of options out there!!
Thanks for making so many builds! It’s unfortunate that the newer builds don’t seem to work with Virtualbox, but I chose a build from Nov. 17th and it worked beautifully. The question I have is that I can’t get the audio to work or flash. I tried following some steps to fix the audio that used the command alsaconf, which doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Also, I was able to download some “plugins.tar” from dropbox and “install” them, but Chrome doesn’t want to load flash.
Do you know of a guide that works with recent builds? I would like to install Chromium OS on an old Sony Vaio laptop. but I’m hesitant to do so if I can’t get Flash to work.
Hi
The later versions are suffering from poor graphics support which Im working on, but its a slow process with other commitments currently.
Im not aware of any specific guides other than just using Google to find out what you need.
Everytime I try one of your latest builds, it goes to the Chromium startup screen for a liitle while then reboots the PC. It does that constantly. Why? Is there a fix for that so it will work fine?
Hi
More than likely graphics support. Im working on it
Whenever I try one of your builds, the “Chromium” startup screen comes up for a little while then the PC reboots. It does that constantly. Why? Is there a fix for it so it will work fine?
Its the lack of graphics support for your card most likely. I’m working on it!
Ploplinux boot manager will allow you to boot to usb on computer that doesn’t let you normally.
http://www.plop.at/en/ploplinux/livecd.html
Burn iso to cd/dvd and boot, then select boot manager then usb.
pls can you add list of changes? also I didnt found google now and music player in new versions.
cheers!
Hi Arnold,
First of all, thank you for all the great work you do. I work for a school board in Montreal and we are using Chromium OS to put on old Toshiba laptops to get technology into the hands of our less fortunate students. I have been able to install Chromium OS onto the hard drive from a USB image but we now would like to install flash as well I can’t seem to figure out the password to get in as root. I do a ctrl Alt F2, log in as Chronos and “password” as the password but what is the password for sudo to get in as the root user?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Hi
Sudo su and then enter the same password. You then have root access
Try this also > http://reviewingtech.com/get-latest-builds-chromium-os-flash-working/
PS: Hey Arnold, have you got the graphics issue fixed & ready for me 2 try it again yet?
Not yet! Still working on it!
Everything works perfect except when I add language of Simplified or Traditional Chinese it shows no input method available. I remember the input method works fine when I use Hexxeh’s build. Any idea how I can get it work?
Hi Tim
No idea on that, sorry. Ill add it to the list of things to review
Thank you for your builds, it’s been very useful! Compiling manually can be horrible, so your IMGs are a nice alternative 🙂
Here’s a simple question: which is your latest build with working UEFI boot? My two computers (a Surface Pro 2 and an iMac) are unable to boot from either the latest stable or weekly build. Help please?
Stable? Sorry, I meant “daily”. Which is not exactly the same 😛
Hi
Its not something I compile for specifically, so you may be out of luck, sorry. Ill take a look.
Someone mentioned the build from Nov 17 worked on VirtualBox, I get nothing except a reboot and a black screen. Is there a specific build that will work or an archive of older builds that are known to work?
Instead of formatting, is it possible to overwrite the current Chromium OS on my USB using Disk Imager?
Hi Eddie
The diskimager will do that by default.
Can you please get Flash Player working on Every single website & get the Flash Player plugin installed in Chromium bc it’s not install @ all I tried this> http://reviewingtech.com/get-latest-builds-chromium-os-flash-working/ & it didn’t work. Can you get this fixed so Adobe Flash Player will work on all videos & on all websites please?
(Edit): I even tried > https://gist.github.com/dz0ny/3065781 & those didn’t work ether.
Eddie: I had a frustrating time with that script as well, but then I tried running it AFTER being logged into my google account and everything worked great (except the MP3 codec, I ended up commenting that part out).
Hope that helps!
Please fix the Syncing problem too please.
Did you get the Flash Player & the Google Drive Sync issues fixed?
No..
I have tried numerous builds and also the latest multi driver build – Cx86OS_R34-5196_Multi_2.7z on both a lenovo t61 laptop and a dell d830 laptop. Both boot up on the usb and give me a Chromium OS sceen briefly, then it restarts, I force it to boot again on the USB. I get the Chromium OS sceen briefly again and then a blank screen. If I press Ctrl-Alt-F2, I can log into the shell. I mounted another usb drive with the lshw utility on it and it seems like the os is loading the drivers – ie VGA Controller is loading the nouveau driver and Ethernet interface is loading the e1000e driver. Can you suggest something to look at or a utility to run and post the results that might help? Thank you so much!!
As a follow-up to my previous post see the pastebin links:
lsmod file:
http://pastebin.com/11wgB8dB
dmesg file:
http://pastebin.com/CKyCkpbP
Xorg.0.log file:
http://pastebin.com/XpcUnEH0
Thanks Tom. I’ll take a detailed look soon but it does look video related…
Its lack of video support. I’m working on it so bear with me!
Thanks! I appreciate it. I tried it on a newer Lenovo laptop at work and it seems to boot up fine. If you solve the video issue on the older laptop let me know. Thanks for all the hard work that you do!!
How often do you release a new Chromium OS Special Edition build?
Whenever I can! Its time intensive to sort..
Sorry Arnold but I’m using Cr OS Linux >http://getchrome.eu/ just untill you get the Google Drive Sync issue fixed & the Adobe Flash Plugin installed. Please let me know when you have them resolved please.
What laptop do you have this running on?
Do you think it would work on an eee pc 1000h?
I have installed the special edition build on hp dv6, everything is working (thanks for Broadcom build) fine except audio. On windows OS, it shows as IDT High Definition Audio driver, however I was not able to figure out how to get it working on Chromium OS.
Any ideas, how I can get it to work?
None, yet. Added to the list of things to do!
Any news on IDT audio support yet? ^_^
Still on the list. Ill have a look when I can.
Tried booting up the latest 64bit img. It booted up nicely and I was able to get the terminal working too. I can’t get pass the setup screen though. It seems that my wifi isn’t being detected or something. It’s Ralink RT5390R… is there a specific build that would make it work or it’s just not supported right now?
No specific build yet. One to add to the list of things to fix.
Title: My Recent Requests
Are my recent requests on your to do list? 🙂
Hello
i’ve installed chromeos on MSI Wind u100 with Realtek 8187se wifi chipset but it didn’t recognize that chipset (so wifi didn’t work)
Anyone with MSI u100 have had the same problem? if so how did you solve it?
thanks
regards
S
Hi
Ill add the drivers to the list of stuff I need to try to get in the special buillds… Ill let you know..
Hi,
Could I also request some wireless drivers? These are for the Medion Akoya E1222 (E122X series). There are drivers here.
Thank you,
Alex
Added to the list!
Hi Alex,
I also have a Medion Akoya E1222 netbook but can’t seem to instal chromium on it because he doesn’t find a network. Were you able to instal it? Could you help me? Thx!
Jonathan
I was wondering if there was a list of supported WiFi modules? If not could we create one? It might then be easier for the community to provide correct drivers for unsupported devices.
I currently have two MSI’s :
U135 Ralink RT3090
U130 Atheros AR5B95
in earlier builds i got nothing on the setup screen under the network dropdown. In newer builds.. pretty much anything after July, the network drop down shows both the WiFi and Ethernet MAC address. I can connect to ethernet, but wifi is a no go. It doesn’t see any of my networks. I’ve even tried removing the security settings, and manually entering the SSID via “join other wifi” … still nothing.
If it’s possible for me to provide the correct drivers, or possibly pointed to instructions to inject them myself i’d gladly give that a try.
No list of supported drivers as such. Im working on a special build to get as many as I can into the build, but this takes time, so bear with me.
Hi Simone, I have a same problem. Could you fix it? thanks
Simone hi i have an Medion akoya E1210 which i think is the same as yours. Used this pci-e wireless card from ebay Azurewave AW-NE766
Just curious but what is RTFM and how do I get it after downloading your build. It says to run it in VirtualBox follow these instructions (there is a link to VirtualBox website by the way and then it says to RTFM) I can find no reference to RTFM on the VirtualBox website). I have the last build Hexxeh posted of Chromium OS to his blog (from April 2013) working in VirtualBox but looking for a more recent build at least from January of this year. If I can get anything more recent great otherwise looking for January 2014 builds. Hexxeh’s build works for me but is of course outdated. I am using an Apple MacBook Pro (2009 model that shipped with OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 and then updated to 10.6.8 and to OS 10.9.1 Mavericks – just updated yesterday to 10.9.2) with the latest version of VirtualBox. Your builds either say my processor is wrong if using 64 bit version but have classified as 32 bit etc or it loads a grub menu but won’t run Chromium OS.
If you need more details I will gladly provide them to you ASAP. Any ideas though how to get one of your builds of Chromium OS working in VirtualBox? Your link to the instructions (doesn’t go to an instruction page for installing Chromium OS just to VirtualBox homepage) doesn’t work for me. Thanks!
The virtualbox builds seem to be broken at the moment (as do Vmware ports) due to what looks like graphics incompatibilities.
Ill take a look when I can
Yes Arnold, Chromium OS does not work with the latest VirtualBox version v4.3.8 r92456 on Windows. Otherwise, thank you for your work!
Is it working with the older version of VirtualBox ?
No, sorry. Its the later builds of chromiuomos that break the video, not VirtualBox.. Go for an older build from the weekly seciotn and see if they work better for you
Seth,
Is it possible to:
1) Dual boot the dailies with another *nix (my case FC20), have had issues with CR OS proper in this regard as FC20 remains non-bootable
2) run this setup in FDE +LVM, even if each system is its own FDE partition
les you may wanna try a rt28xx or 3xxx series as they are in some of the oldest kernels in use at least to get installed…
hi all, can someone chick if chromevox the screenreader of chrome os works in the builds? i seem not to get the virtualbox builds to work here.
here are the instructions how to launch chromevox if someone want to try this:
http://www.chromevox.com/chromeos/installing.html
After running the update on my EeePC 1000HA the video flickers constantly by shifting left and back constantly. Doesn’t matter if the display is text or graphic mode. I believe the video chipset is Intel GMA950. I can ssh into it. Any suggestions? 🙂
have you tried the later special builds? If so, and its still misbehaving, then no, sorry!
I have the same problem with an acer aspire one netbook (model D250 which has intel gma 950). Everything works fine with the special build Cx86OS_R34-5196_Multi_2.7z, but if I try the latest builds then the screen jumps to the left and back a lot.
A quick workaround if I am at home is to plug in a second monitor using the vga port on the side of the netbook. As soon as this is done the netbook screen stabilizes. It then remains working as it should even after I detach the vga cable. Perhaps this bit of info might help track down what is going wrong.
Keep up the good work. I appreciate all the effort it must take you to provide us with the latest chromium builds.
Good spot! I hadn’t thought of that so I’ll take a look.
Thanks for the feedback!!
I can confirm that plugging in an external monitor and then unplugging it stabalizes the screen. This is on an Acer Aspire One AOA 150 zg5 Netbook which uses the Intel GMA950 graphics chip.
Chromium is a bit sluggish on this device and I am not sure if it is that I only used a 4GB USB stick (and there isn’t enough room for cache) or if it’s just the lowly hardware (only 1GB RAM and 5400 RPM hard drive). I would think the CPU would be good enough (1.6 GHz Atom).
Thanks.
There is a issue open on Chromium issue page.
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=352933
I quoted your workaround on there, would great if you and others could vote the issue and get it noticed and fixed.
Hey Arnold, I downloaded the latest multidriver build, and flashed to my pendrive with dd. On reboot, all I get is a blinking cursor on the screen, and nothing’s loading from my USB.
I tried installing it from UNetbootin (I’m on Ubuntu, so yeah), and when i booted into the drive, I got the unetbootin startup page, which tries to boot into ‘Default’, but can’t.
The error I get is after “Loading /ubninit…….”, and the whole screen fills up with “…..”.
After what seems like an hour, it says “Not enough memory to load image”.
I’ve got 2GB of RAM, and a ton o’ space on my HDD.
What am I missing?
Same here, did you figure it out?
“Not enough memory to load specified image”
I wonder if I accidentally put 64 vs. 32bit on the usb and thats the issue.
Tried tab to edit options, but no idea what to type there.
Same here – not enough memory (1,5gb available on my machine) – any solutions yet?
Hi.
The last Special Build (Cx86OS_R34-5196_Multi_2.7z) works ok on a Netbook HP Mini 110?
Any special driver or step needed?
Thanks for all
So cool, lastest build working with my laptop asus s46ca
hey can i get some help
i can boot the system and get in to the terminal with ctr alt f2
but it wont start user interface
Are the daily updates still being updated? I noticed there’s no update for 3/16/2014. That’s why I’m asking.
I have had a server failure sadly so am sourcing new bits. You can update from the dev server meanwhile however….
Trying to get Flash and other codecs working on this newest build. Older scripts for installing these codecs fails like it is unable to write to the directory needed to install. Any ideas or working scripts?
Thanks for your work with Chromium, awesome project.
Are your builds read only now? Possibly why I am getting errors? I know the Oct 22nd build was working properly on Chrome 32.
I will try an older build an see if that works for me.
Nope. Still read write with the mount options noted in other posts
Good afternoon Arnold,
once again thank you for all your hard work. I work for a school board in Montreal and we received 24 Toshiba Satellite Pro L650’s that we want to turn into Chromium books for a special needs class.
I am able to boot from a USB with your cx86 image but on the welcome page it does not detect the network. (wireless or Ehternet). I searched through your site to find a fix but was unsuccessful. Do you have an image that would work with this model or a fix i could use.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The drivers that your laptops use won’t be included on Chromium OS, have you tried the Broadcom special build?
Are there any newer daily builds than 14 of March? It’s the 22nd now and I’m just wondering why the latest is 14th
Hi. Server failure is to blame. I have new parts on order, then the builds will restart. The Dev server is fine if you want to update from that…
Hi Arnold,
Is there a fix for the video driver issue? Because we keep running into that problem. We will see the Chromium logo followed by a black screen.
The fix for the wireless works perfect.
Not yet. It’s being worked on.
Are there going to be any new Broadcom Special Builds or are those halted?
Yes… With a new kernel as well..
Will the updates from the Dev Server work on the broadcom Special Edition Build?
No. That’s just a vanilla release. One thing at once!
Dear Arnold,
Just had a stuck of mounting second partition “STATE”, where can I find something like fstab in “ROOT-A” disk?
just check my link: tikkafoods.com/20140329_063148_Android.jpg
log message: EXT4-fs (sda1): VFS: Can’t find ext4 filesystem
ps. I’m using alternative grub booting, and the partitions are located at sda7 and sda9
A friend has a Dell D410 circa 2006 running XP. She can’t afford a new computer, and her D410 won’t support Windows 8. I’ve been looking at Chromium OS as a possible alternative for her and downloaded ChromeOS-Vanilla-4028.0.2013_04_20_1810-r706c4144 from ChromeOS.Hexxeh.net. It runs great with a mouse on an older Toshiba Satellite U205-S5057 machine that I have (although the Alps touchpad doesn’t work). Before adding the published script for touchpad compatibility, I began searching for later Chromium releases and found your site. I’m a bit bewildered by the number of daily builds. While I understand and greatly appreciate the work that you and others are doing to develop Chromium OS, I’m wondering if you can point me to a particular release that you feel is reasonably tested and stable that I can install on my friends D410. Is anyone considering a general release for use by XP refugees who are not OS savvy? It might be a great opportunity to get your work distributed to a much wider user base. Thanks for your help.
Hi
All the builds are build on a daily basis so the simplest way of getting a stable build is to simply try them! They are compiled nightly so try a few and see which one suits you best. You can always update from the dev server if needed at a later date to keep things up to date..
So I know this is the “dumb” question that I see 10 times here, but I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong …
I’ve got chromium os running on a flash drive. I’ve got the April 5 build for x86. I go to crosh and try to shell or even just do install, or I go to dev console, and no login or password will work. I am trying chronos and root.
In the past under vanilla I used ‘facepunch’ … here it looks like I should be using ‘password’ but no joy. I’ve tried chronos chromeos dell1234 Password passwd and even just leaving it blank, no luck.
Any thoughts? Am i doing something really stupid? Is there any way to set it after the fact? I hope I’m just being an idiot 🙂
So – interesting … I gave up on the 04/05 build and went back to the 03/31 x64 build for fun. No problems with passwords at all. ‘password’ works for all users chronos and sudo su etc.
Maybe an issue with that image?
Looks like the way the encrypted password is calculayed has changed. Im rebuilding as we speak so you should have new builds soon
Awesome thanks! Glad to know it wasn’t me being stupid, though either way it solves the problem 🙂
Still broken by the look of things (as is my dev server) so the behaviour looks to have changed. Logged a bug with the dev team… Ill try to debug tomorrow if I have no feedback
Hello, I’m currently trying out booting and installing you build on my old 2008 iMac, But i can never get i to boot, i have followed you instructions to install it on USB stick, but as soon as i boots and i choose the image to boot from, i get a message that i could not found a suitable image, and then it starts booting in blind mode, not sure what that means, and after that i just reboots og goes black with a “_” blinking in the left upper corner.
What could it be? and do you know if it’s even possible to run it on the iMac 2008 model.
PS. Thanks for all of your hard work, really love someone continuing after Hexxeh
Hi, and thanks for your great work 🙂
I have read in the previous comments that there’s some problems with the video-drivers in the latest releases. I’m attempting to run your VirtualBox builds (64-bit version) and because of what I’ve read here, I tried the oldest .vdi from your ‘weekly-directory’, but that fails as described with only a black screen (and actually a reboot shortly after startup, once).
If I try your most fresh builds, I get an information text when I try to boot:
‘early console in decompress_kernel
KASLR using RDTSC…
Decompressing Linux… Parsing ELF… Performing relocations… done.
Booting the kernel.’
That happens first once, and the text remains for 10 or so seconds before it reboots, and on the second attempt nothing happens afterwords, the text is just displayed ‘forever’.
As I’m actually have text and display on those late builds, my logic tells me that the video-driver issue isn’t the cause of the hangup during boot. Have you seen this before, and/or do you have some trick in your sleeve to share?
BR
Henning
Hi. It is the video drivers. No tricks other than try one of the special builds to see if it makes any difference….
Thanks for your reply 🙂
I tried all three with no luck, unfortunately, but I’ll keep on following your work and try new builds as they come along 🙂
BR
Henning
Hey everyone! First off thank you so much for continuing to build these. I just have one question. I have a x86 based system. When I go to boot the newly written image I get a bunch of ^@ over and over then it reboots. What could be the issue here? Anyone know? 🙂
Hi. First of all thank you for all your great work and help thus far. I have been using hexxehs version of chromium for the last year with all the plugins then. I then came across yours with 64 bit versions. I had installed every one since march 30th and was able to get all the plugins (by trying them twice, as the first times around they would not install the flash plugin. And you DO need to use the following command: “mount -o remount, rw /” before doing curl! ).
Moreover, I am having problems with the current versions (usb) as they would come to grub screen or sometimes they won’t, and give the following error: “error: couldn’t terminate EFI services”. This appers to be a Grup 2.0 issue as I had used 1.94 without any problems. You are able to boot up by using the computer’s boot selector (in my case holding the “esc” key and selecting usb thumb drive. I have found the following search in hopes of getting this resolved in your Camd64os releases.
Google result : bug #37280: GRUB EFI 2.00 doesn’t start with “error: couldn’t terminate EFI services”
Hope you can find a solution.
Thank you for all your work
Ian
My computers are Asus X201EP (celeron 64bit) and Asus X202 (i3).
Thanks
Ian
Hi Arnold,
After been away for some time, I have tried to install several Chrome OS images on my USB stick, using the same procedure that you have outlined and that worked in the past.
However, every image I tried to install the last couple of weeks, resulted in the same error. Here you find what’s on my laptop screen:
EARLY CONSOLE IN DECOMPRESS_KERNEL
DECOMPRESSING LINUX … PARSING ELF … PERFORMING RECALCULATION …done
BOOTING THE KERNEL
Hi Arnold,
Not quite finished with my comment…
After the message “BOOTING THE KERNEL” follows a restart.
The machine then restarts and then displays EXACTLY the same messages, gives a black screen and then displays the same message in a smaller font.
One can then wait until the end of time: nothing happens.
Could you help me out on this?
Thanks,
Hans
Hi Hans
More than likely lack of graphics support. Its a work in progress but try the special builds and see if you get any further