Installing ChromeOS on VirtualBox using the NeverWare build

Experimenting with ChromeOS on VirtualBox.md

Installing ChromeOS on VirtualBox

1. Download the NeverWare's ChromeOS build from http://www.neverware.com/freedownload

2. Extract the *.bin.zip

3. Convert it to VDI. vboxmanage convertdd chromiumos_image.bin chromiumos_image.vdi

4. mv chromiumis_image.vdi C:\t\v\chromeos\

5. Create a VM with settings:

• Guest OS type: Linux/Other Linux
• 2048 RAM
• Use existing chromiumos_image.vdi as hard disk
• Enable EFI (special OSes)
• Enable PAE/NX
• change pointing device to PS/2 Mouse

6. Start the VM

The ChromiumOS distribution CloudReady was discontinued some time after Google acquired the company that offered it. As mentioned above the successor is ChromeOS Flex but there don't seem to be any official virtual machine images available.

Downloading the virtual machine image

The CloudReady OVA file mentioned in the knowledge base article is available on the Wayback Machine (direct download).

$ sha256sum CloudReady-Home-v83-x64.ova
7e4c7304c4b7363dfd778d3a58765c4d03fcd9fb3a1e5ae97c2582b42e4b66ad  CloudReady-Home-v83-x64.ova

The download from the Google Drive link above is unsurprisingly much faster.

The version of the CloudReady OVA is actually fairly dated. The virtual machine image was created using CloudReady 83.4.4 and the last released version seems to be CloudReady 96.4.6, which is available on the Internet Archive.

Running ChromiumOS in a virtual machine

If you'd like to run CloudReady as a VM, you can do so using VMware applications on Linux, Windows and Mac including VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation, VMware Player, and VMware Fusion. We've prepared a CloudReady: Home Edition image as a VMware OVA file to make it easy to import and get started.

CloudReady will not work with Virtualbox as a host-application due to graphics incompatibilities

https://web.archive.org/web/20190130020129/https://neverware.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001615368

CloudReady in VirtualBox

CloudReady 83.4.4 ChromiumOS in VirtualBox 6.1.40 on macOS 10.15.7 (hangs on boot screen, see above)

CloudReady in VMware Fusion

CloudReady 83.4.4 in VMware Fusion Player 12.1.2 on macOS 10.15.7 (seems to work fine)

CloudReady 83.4.4 ChromiumOS OVA file from the link above works fine for me in VirtualBox 7.0.12 on Fedora 39 after I set Graphics Controller on Display page to VMSVGA, also set Enable 3D Acceleration.

Hello. Is it possible to install ChromeOS 123.0.6312.94 on a virtual machine?

how can i install newest chormeOS on virtualbox?, i have already convert it to VDI, but sill stuck at blackscreen with blinking cursor

@n0thing19 Did the OVA file work for you?
Did you try setting the graphics controller to VMSVGA?

looking forward to if there's anyway chrome OS flex is possible to run on virtualbox, @ me if there's a way
also yes, the v83 build does work