Software support, or the lack of it, is a major reason why people start to replace their old hardware. You'd be surprised how well lightweight operating systems can run on ancient laptops and PCs due to their forgiving system requirements. Unfortunately, the best Mac laptops and desktops aren't forgiving at all when it comes to end-of-life support. When a MacBook stops receiving new macOS updates, the clock starts ticking for app support. In just a few years, a MacBook unable to upgrade to newer macOS versions will suffer from worsening software support, stability issues, and other problems. However, even if your MacBook isn't usable running macOS anymore, it can still run using other operating systems.

To prove it, I grabbed the oldest MacBook I could find and installed ChromeOS Flex on it. The laptop in question? A black MacBook from 2006 equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor. That's right, I took an 18-year-old MacBook — one of the first to sport a dual-core CPU and the second-ever Intel MacBook released — and gave it a new lease on life by using ChromeOS.

How ChromeOS Flex saves old hardware

Combining the low system requirements of ChromeOS with cloud computing

You've probably heard of ChromeOS, the operating system from Google that powers Chromebooks. ChromeOS Flex is a modified version of ChromeOS designed to run on really old hardware, specifically the kinds of systems that would be useless running macOS or Windows. It's true that there are plenty of great Linux distros that can revive aging computers, but most Linux variants aren't made for the average user. By comparison, Google claims ChromeOS Flex (which is also Linux-based) can be installed on all kinds of old Macs and PCs in about five minutes.

Since every form of ChromeOS heavily relies on the cloud, it will work on old Macs and PCs that don't have the latest specs. For reference, ChromeOS Flex requires only three things to boot: a 64-bit processor from Intel or AMD, 4GB of RAM, and 16GB of available storage. There is an exhaustive list of laptop models that are confirmed to work with ChromeOS Flex, so you might be able to take the guesswork out of the process if your machine is on the list. In my case, the MacBook I was using with ChromeOS Flex wasn't supported. It shipped with only 1GB of memory, but I was able to upgrade it to 4GB with two SO-DIMM memory sticks, roughly five minutes of labor, and spending about $20 on Amazon.

That's the great thing about old computers: they're very easy to upgrade and offer excellent compatibility with third-party operating systems. As the market continues to favor soldered components and locked-down software, this project probably won't be viable with today's laptops 18 years from now. But with my 2006 MacBook, you could perform a RAM upgrade, SSD swap, and battery replacement in about 10 minutes.

How old? Let's try a MacBook from 2006

Mac OS X Lion was this machine's last supported OS, until ChromeOS Flex

By choosing a MacBook from 2006, I was intentionally pushing ChromeOS Flex — and the laptop's internal hardware — to their limits. This MacBook was sold by Apple for less than a year, as it was introduced in November 2006 and was discontinued in May 2007. The last operating system upgrade it received was to Mac OS X Lion, which released in 2011, and even that required users of this MacBook to perform a RAM upgrade. So, getting ChromeOS Flex to run on an Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook would be an impressive feat for the platform.

While I expected to run into some issues, there didn't really end up being any. You can create a bootable ChromeOS Flex installer through an app in the Chrome Web Store, and it requires some kind of storage device with at least 8GB of storage. I used a USB drive, but something like an SD card will work too. Of course, whichever type of storage device you use will be completely erased and reformatted, so keep that in mind. After a few clicks, the ChromeOS Flex installer was created.

The next part is usually the hard one: getting a MacBook to boot from the ChromeOS Flex USB drive. Some older Macs don't like booting up from USB drives with operating systems other than Mac OS X. It's an issue with the computer's UEFI, or the program that bridges the gap between low-level firmware and a high-level operating system. If you do run into this issue, there are options, like using the third-party rEFInd tool. However, my MacBook was able to boot up straight from the ChromeOS Flex USB drive after holding the Option key during startup. After that, it was as simple as taking ChromeOS Flex for a test drive or permanently installing it on my MacBook's storage drive.

It's slow, but it works

And that's more than I can say about Mac OS X or macOS

So, how does ChromeOS Flex run on my 18-year-old MacBook? Admittedly, worse than I expected. There is a lot of lag, and it seems the old Intel Core 2 Duo processor with Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics may really be too underpowered for any OS in 2024. However, expectations do need to be managed. It works, and that's so much more than you can say about Mac OS X on this MacBook. For starters, you can absolutely view web pages, stream videos, and do all kinds of web-based tasks with this MacBook running ChromeOS. Not a single officially-supported OS — neither Mac OS X or Windows — offers support for an up-to-date version of a major browser. Simply the fact that I could browse the web, navigate ChromeOS, and stream YouTube videos on an 18-year-old MacBook is downright impressive.