Netflix arrives on ARM-powered Samsung Chromebook

Samsung’s $250 Chromebook rolled out in October and quickly climbed to the top of the charts on Amazon.

Indeed, the ARM-powered Chromebook is a dream come true for Linux enthusiasts and modders.

We’ve already seen Ubuntu loaded up on the cloud-centric laptop, along with a port of openSUSE, a published guide to accessing the Gentoo Linux kernel that powers the versatile device, the coding of a Chromebook-specific flavor of Ubuntu Linux and a Chromebook version of Bodhi Linux.

Clearly, there was (and still is) quite a lot of pent up demand for the device – and not just because of its cloud-centric OS and versatility. Rather, the Samsung Chromebook is one of the first real mobile implementations of ARM’s long-awaited Cortex-A15 processor in the form of Samsung’s Exynos 5 dual-core chip.

However, despite all the excitement surrounding Samsung’s Chromebook, the laptop suffered from one major disadvantage – a lack of support for Netflix.

Fortunately, all that changed this week, as Google has officially confirmed that Netflix is now functioning on the device, courtesy of HTML5. Meaning, there is no need to update the Chromebook, as users can simply load the Netflix site and start streaming now.

As TG Daily previously reported, Samsung’s Chromebook features an 11.6 inch display, a Samsung Exynos 5 dual core ARM-based processor (Cortex-A15) and approximately 6.5 hours of battery life.

Additional specs for include 802.11n/WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, HDMI output, a VGA camera, 16GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, 10 second boot time and instant resume from sleep.

Chrome OS can best be described as a Linux-based operating system designed to work exclusively with web applications and Mountain View’s cloud-based Google Drive. The operating system was announced on July 7, 2009, with the first Intel-based Chromebooks shipping on June 15, 2011.