Download Chrome Flow (legacy release)

I love Hexxeh's Chrome OS. I became a fan when the old version Flow came out. Recently, Hexxeh updated to a new version entitled Vanilla which is very smooth and very cool. Hexxeh is working hard with daily updates - guaranteeing that even if your hardware isn't supported now, it will be very soon. (Especially if you get on Hexxeh's Twitter and kindly ask him to fix whatever issue you are experiencing!)

However, every genius has a quirk, and Hexxeh's is that when he released Vanilla, the download for Flow completely disappeared from his website. No old release page like other distros? Hexxeh's explanation can be found on his Google+:

"I removed Flow because it's ancient, likely full of known security vulnerabilities and no longer represents what Chromium OS looks and feels like at present. I'm aware that lots of folks relied on it for the extra hardware support, but I felt it would be irresponsible to continue to offer such outdated software."


Well, that's nice, but many distros keep older, less secure releases on their website in case of compatibility issues, etc. So for those who want to download the old version Flow, here it is!:

Download Chrome OS Flow from my Dropbox:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51458991/ChromeOS-Flow.img.zip

Md5sums:
The .zip: 855183f60ea8b12b5665d931c58ebb21
The .img: 3e2e1c757afcb29d25a74c14d1c44fb1


Yes, Hexxeh will probably not be happy for this to be floating around, but somebody's gotta chronicle his old stuff. Out with the old and in with the new has never been the way of the *nix OS. Good operating systems are built on respect and appreciation of the past.

A few things you will need to know. For one, here is the Flow login:

Username: facepunch@gmail.com
Password: facepunch

Also, if you are wanting an ISO you are not going to get one. Hexxeh uses .img files for building live USB drives, not CDs. You can burn the image to a 2 GB (or more) thumb drive using the instructions below.

Windows instructions:
1. Unzip the file
2. Use Windows Image Writer to write the .img to the USB device

Linux instructions:
1. Unzip the file

2. Run the following (where sdX is your USB stick and ChromeOS.img is the path to the .img file): dd if=ChromeOS.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M

NOTE: As Hexxeh warns, Flow is slightly buggy though it supports more hardware. In order to get HTTPS webpages to work, you may have to change the time/zone and/or revert to SSL 2.0 and/or disable TLS. The last 2 settings can be found under Options>Under the Hood.

Many thanks to Jimmy L. for the .img! Enjoy!

UPDATE: Well, it looks like Hexxeh has brought the world a solution!: Chromium Lime boasts of being the best of both Flow and Vanilla! Very happy for this. Still, I am very glad to have recorded a piece of history here with the Flow build. Also, there may be those who want to be able to use a 2 GB USB stick instead of the 4 GB that newer builds require.