I’m genuinely curious to hear how this would go.

If this was indeed a fact advertised on the marketing material or worse on the packaging/product page, then he can have a refund or at least a partial one, depending on the country. If it was talked about what could happen, or not mentionned in any official marketing material but in PR pieces, then nope.

See eg the PS3 claiming it could install a normal linux.

I don't know how the exact laws work in other countries, but in France it's also two different things that work differently, one is you sold me a product that isn't working, the other is your marketing lied. Both are illegal but on different terms. Thus if it's not on the box or product page, then it's a marketing material issue.

Wasn't the PS3 refund only like $10-$20? Why even go through that effort for a Chromebook?

It's not about the $10-$20, it's about sending the message.

Costing a many billion dollar multinational corporation $10-20 isn't sending a message at all. It's just a waste of your time.

Not if you expand the $10 into a class action. That however is a lot of work.

It still doesn't add up to a lot of money. The total class of people who were trying to run Linux on the PS3 and then weren't able to just isn't that big.

Once the class action is in motion, what's to stop many more PS3 owners to claim that they were interested in running Linux just to get the free ten bucks?

That winds up being a big payday for a law firm, and free identity monitoring for everybody else...

“file a complaint with consumer protection”

Can you clarify what you mean with this? What consumer protection?

In the United States:

For interstate commerce: FTC [1] or state/county AGs/consumer affairs bureaus, e.g. NYS [2], CA [3], WA[4]

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consume...

[2] https://www.usa.gov/state-consumer/new-york

[3] https://www.usa.gov/state-consumer/california

[4] https://www.usa.gov/state-consumer/washington

It would be highly jurisdiction-dependent.