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#chromeosflex #chromeos #google
00:00 Introduction
00:42 Sponsor: 100 free credits for your Linux or Gaming server
01:42 Installation process: unnecessarily complex
03:09 Office: simple and good, on the surface
06:17 Problems: It's not ChromeOS
07:55 Application switching is completely broken
09:45 Interaction with Windows is poor
10:44 Big UX errors in the Settings app
12:11 Preview is not useful
13:39 Who is this thing for?
4:14 p.m. Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly
5:14 p.m. Support the channel
The interface is extremely simple. You have a basic bottom bar with a main menu and search box on the far left, application icons that double as a taskbar in the middle, and a calendar and system menu on the right . If something is playing in an app, you also get a media indicator next to the calendar to let you control playback.
You can't change anything except the wallpaper and the position of this taskbar: bottom, left or right, no option at the top. You also have a dark mode.
You have touchpad gestures, with a 3-finger swipe up to preview all your windows and virtual desktops, and a 4-finger swipe left or right to switch between desktops.
Windows uses the Windows button layout, on the right side, namely minimize, maximize and close, as well as a menu to interact with the window.
You can run any web application from the CHRome web store, which has a lot of stuff, you can add any website as a shortcut that will appear in the main menu and be usable as an application, or you You can enable the Linux development environment from the settings.
It gives you a Debian container, with access to the base repositories, but you can install faltpak, add flathub and run whatever you want, although since it's a container some things won't work, like OBS For example.
The problems:
Firstly, the flagship feature of ChromeOS is that it has its own Android container that runs any Android app very well. Chrome OS Flex cannot do this. It doesn't have access to Android apps, which is a real shame.
Then we have more factual, UX-based issues like window inconsistencies. Chrome OS takes web apps and passes them on to desktop apps. The problem is that not all applications are treated the same. Opening YouTube, or the file manager, displays a window that looks like an application: a short title bar and standard controls. But if I open Google Drive, I get a browser window with a different URL bar, tabs and title bar. Then if I open Google Sheets I don't get a separate app window, it opens in a tab inside the Google Reader window, so I don't get a d icon. application in the taskbar.
It's completely unreadable: you never know what to expect when opening an application, where it will open, where your tab or window is, and if it has been minimized by another application.
Then you have this horrible visual aid when you resize a window: when your mouse pointer goes to the side of a window, you get this black bar that appears around that side.
Moving windows sucks. You see, the theme is either completely white or dark. The title bar merges with the header or toolbar. Except you can only drag a window from its title bar, and you don't know exactly where it starts or ends, because the title bar doesn't show the window title, just buttons. And you also can't press Super or Alt while dragging anywhere on the window to move it.
The settings are all displayed on one page, with a sidebar. Clicking on the sidebar takes you to the appropriate section of this single settings page. Moves you, doesn't scroll you, so you don't immediately realize it's a single page. If you scroll yourself, the selected item in the sidebar does not change. So the sidebar now tells me I'm in Accessibility Settings, when I look at Network Settings. Pretty bad design.
And then the overview. It lists all your open windows, which is very useful. But ChromeOS doesn't know what a window is or isn't, so no, I don't see all my windows, I see all the individual apps and then a Chrome window with multiple tabs that should be separate apps.
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