30 January 2017 by Lars Vilhuber
The power of… old laptops? (Lenovo X200t)
After I failed to install pfSense on my old Lenovo X200t (manufactured 05/2009!), I guess I was on a roll. So after verifying that openSUSE Tumbleweed ran, I immediately blew it and its thousands of configuration options away and tried to install Chrome OS. More specifically, Neverware Cloudready Home Edition. Turns out, works like a charm. Coldstarted boot-up (with a spinning hard-drive, not a SSD!) in about 20s to the login screen, and though the pen doesn’t work, it’s a perfectly functional and fast web browsing device, running everything that the Google Chrome store has to offer very well.
Kudos to the Neverware people – this is truly the way old laptops should end their days, and it doesn’t require much Linux expertise. All my visitors (unless they are Apple fanatics without a Google account) now have the perfect visitor laptop available to them. Should any turned-back refugees knock on my door – you can use it, too!