101 finally arriving to stable

Got it today on Octopus/Droid. Really like the dark boot screen, which now gives both 'official' versions of chromeOS a uniform look and feel. For my own use case, the revamped Smart Lock UI still needs a flag. Also the "productivity" flags for updated launcher and calendar are still required, as is the flag for crosh SWA. These are minor quibbles.

What this release has confirmed for me however is that Android 11 has made it to the stable channel for many more devices. While I don't use Android on my Chromebook, so it won't affect me, I do think a lot of users of entry level devices with 4 GB RAM, those who may have been OK with ARC++, may now run into issues with ARCVM. I tested it on my 4 GB device while 101 was in beta, and again now it is in stable, and IMO it is way too resource intensive for these devices. While I was testing again tonight, even with no Android apps running, with just crosvm running in the background, all but ~150 MB of RAM was being consumed. BTW, the only extensions I run are offline docs and ublock origin; memory use of these is negligible. Without ARCVM running I can fire up the Crostini VM, run several Linux and Web apps concurrently, and not come anywhere close to the same RAM utilisation.

I will be interested to hear the experiences of previous ARC++ users with 4 GB devices after they move to ARCVM over the coming days and weeks.

/r/chromeos Thread Link - i.redd.it