I think ChromeOS is the hardest. Having a computer that completely reinstalls itself from the cloud when the user 'inadvertently' breaks it, is huge for schools.

For companies it's not a big deal because their users know what responsibility is. And you can fire them otherwise. Schools don't have that privilege.

From what I saw when I worked at one large sized company that had an in-house tech support, they literally just install and image. Connect a cable to the laptop and install an image. You would go in there and they would have 3-4 being reset for a new employee to have.

Remember, most people at work are not responsible for their computer working. In IT we are because we're doing more advanced things and we're technically able to keep it working and to fix it. However, the HR person, the sales person, etc they are not. And most countries have laws where the employer has to provide working tools, the employer is responsible for providing you with a working laptop and if it breaks it is their responsibility to fix it.

Installing over network is ancient. Here's one option https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19127-01/ultra27.ws/820-6772/z40...

... and making it work for 50 different laptop models, all in slightly different ways and with slightly different software is a lot of work. Plus it just doesn't work over the internet.

Add to that that without chromeOS you've essentially got one choice: windows. So you'll be finding out all about spyware that rootkits the OS, and constant amazement at just how many different rootkits kids can get installed on a single machine. Hell, when I was in school, I wrote a custom rootkit (bo2k like) and installed it on machines. That was fun and instructive.

(I know technically you can make it work over the internet but it takes very capable admins to make that work)

And yes, I hacked the school, but that was through unsecured shared folders and seeing a teacher enter people's grades in excel, not through the rootkit. That I was caught doing (because I decided to "expose" the school by giving a friend's sister her grades 2 weeks in advance, and their parents went to management. I was in detention "for the rest of the year" and I was lucky that 2 teachers demanded I would be allowed to sit my exams because I was the best in their classes)

Thankfully Europe is not US in this regard, here ChromeOS is hardly something to worry about.

ChromeOS is everywhere in public schools in Denmark. I doubt that Denmark and the Netherlands are the only two EU countryes that use them.

However, ChromeBooks will also be banned i Danish schools when the new school year starts in August. The Danish Personal Data Authority (Datatilsynet) have just told the schools that they cannot use them after the summer holidays, for more or less the same reasons and their Dutch colleagues.

The problem then becomes: Which laptops can you get in large enough numbers, at a low enough price, within three to four weeks?

In Germany and Portugal, you only see them in shopping malls mostly, and regularly with shop offers to get rid of them.

Most European countries aren't so lucky, parents are the ones buying the computers, and unless you're into classes related to computing, or at university level, you're not bringing them into class (naturally covid has changed this a bit) only using them at home.

In Germany, the schools provide iPads and I suspect others provide chromebooks. Schools do provide computers for children to use in the school. Nearly all school levels have classes these days about computing. Needing to know how to use a computer is a skill they all need. Primary schools in the UK have had computers for at least 30 years.

Somehow I have another view on the matter, specially on the chaos that happened with sharing computers among family members during early COVID times.

It's because of early covid times that I know German schools have iPads. In Berlin, one school was robbed of tens of thousands of euros of iPads.

I guess some lucky Gymnasium students, it surely isn't like that everywhere outside our beloved capital.

> Which laptops can you get in large enough numbers, at a low enough price, within three to four weeks?

Can they install a Linux distribution on the existing ChromeBooks?

Honestly I half wish we had some kind of supergiant company on this side of the pond too, despite the drawbacks that brings at least it would guarantee some sense of digital stability.

I've had my gmail account for probably more than a decade now and have never had to worry about it going amiss, meanwhile I look at this list of barely legit sounding names (aside from Proton) and wonder if any of these will be still around in a few years.

Web.de was founded in 1995 and GMX in '97. Both now belong to the gigantic German United Internet AG founded in '88 which currently has roughly 10,000 employees and EUR 5.5bn revenue.

European companies lack the self grandiose promotion that USA companies have. But I think that it is a good thing. I wish USA corporations and CEOs chilled a little.

The US is slowly bleeding its tech supremacy to EU. I guess losing manufacturing to China wasn't lesson enough.

I'm pessimistic. Whatever European alternative that will pop up to serve this market will hardly be fit to compete internationally, selling to schools and governments means jumping through hoops to provide an adequate service at an adequate price, that's not the way to build a FAANG competitor. Aside from Spotify there really isn't any top-tier European internet companies with global reach. It's even worse in consumer electronics. There are bits and pieces in other tech, but really, challenging the US isn't a reasonable goal at this point.

Well that’s just not true. And a webpage of “European Alternatives” that 99.99% of Europeans have never heard of, much less come even remotely close to adopting, means nothing.

What? No, that won't happen, at least not in the next 100 years. Europe is just too far behind, technologically.

In a sense Europe isn't really behind, there is lots of know how, research and small-ish companies in the software and hardware space.

There is no Google or Apple or Microsoft though, and accordingly a lot of the network effects and institutional knowledge is lacking.

I do very much concur that there is no European competition for US IT supremacy on the horizon any time in the next decades.

China is a different story...

Yeah, we got to work in donkey carts. Seriously...

With researchers that are from European background, with geopolitics forcing an end into globalization, things will slowly turn into another way.

> Europe is just too far behind, technologically.

A laughable statement. Who was it again that was pleading on their knees to reserve ASML capacity for them?