Download ChromeOS Flex for Linux

How to download and install the latest ChromeOS Flex installer using Ubuntu 22.04 Linux terminal. Plus, flash it to a USB drive.

UPDATE: Google has released a direct download link: dl.google.com/chromeos-f…

This can just as easily be done using a web browser, and the Ventoy gui. For fun, I’m going to show you the terminal way below. I used

Install Ventoy

Ventoy github.com/ventoy/Ventoy is great, because you can have one USB drive with many installers. (For instance, I also have the latest Ubuntu Desktop, and Androidx86 installers on mine.) This part is optional. You can more easily dd the .bin file directly to the USB drive if you don’t want additional installers.

You can browse the latest ventoy releases here: github.com/ventoy/Ventoy…

Or, in my case I can simply run this command to install version 1.0.80:

curl -LO https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases/download/v1.0.80/ventoy-1.0.80-linux.tar.gz

Uncompress, and run command to install Ventoy to your USB drive:

tar -xf ventoy-1.0.80-linux.tar.gz
#CAUTION! This will erase your entire drive. 
#Make sure you double check your usb drive id.
sudo ./ventoy-1.0.80/Ventoy2Disk.sh -i -s -g -L <disklabel> -i /dev/<usb-drive-id>

The -s is for secureboot enabled, and the -g is for gpt partition. Be sure to replace <disklabel> with the label of your choice, and <usb-drive-id> with your usb drive id like: sdb. Check out the options here: www.ventoy.net/en/doc_st…

Download latest ChromeOS Flex

I’m glad Google has released it’s ChromeOS for the generic x64 market. We can reuse laptops nicely. I find it’s more accessible, then Ubuntu for instance, for new Linux users.

dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/…

curl https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chromeos/recovery/cloudready_recovery.conf

Look for the URL after url= at the bottom. For me Sept 27th this is what it looks like:

recovery_tool_version=0.9.2
recovery_tool_linux_version=0.9.2
recovery_tool_update=


name=Chrome OS Flex
version=14989.86.0
desc=
channel=STABLE
hwidmatch=^REVEN($|-.*)
hwid=
md5=651f030f7c7375241ccc3fcf6bfc4549
sha1=8b5717b38f18f7f49a9004ad79a86713ec7429cf
zipfilesize=1176473167
file=chromeos_14989.86.0_reven_recovery_stable-channel_mp-v2.bin
filesize=6939566592
url=https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chromeos/recovery/chromeos_14989.86.0_reven_recovery_stable-channel_mp-v2.bin.zip

You could copy and paste the url into your web browser, or run wget. I used curl:

curl -LO https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chromeos/recovery/chromeos_14989.86.0_reven_recovery_stable-channel_mp-v2.bin.zip

Uncompress, rename, and move to your USB drive image partition.

unzip chromeos_14989.86.0_reven_recovery_stable-channel_mp-v2.bin.zip
move chromeos_14989.86.0_reven_recovery_stable-channel_mp-v2/chromeos_14989.86.0_reven_recovery_stable-channel_mp-v2.bin /dev/<ventoy-image-drive-partition-id>/chromeos-flex-14989.86.0.img

Replace <ventoy-image-drive-partition-id> with the correct id like, sdb1 . Notice I changed the extension from .bin to .img. I think Ventoy only supports .img.

Remove USB Drive & Install ChromeOS Flex!

I just found a script for this: support.google.com/chrom…

https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chromeos/recovery/linux_recovery.sh

sudo bash linux_recovery.sh --config https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chromeos/recovery/cloudready_recovery.conf