News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by resolutebat on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:59PM (#37385007)
Call me paranoid, but this sounds like a marketing campaign by someone who would prefer that schools didn't buy Chromebooks.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by EA-3167 on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:31PM (#37385291)
I think it's more likely that people make note of which stories get upvotes, and then farm them.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by joshspankit on Monday September 04, 2023 @11:41PM (#37387597)
I’m skeptical but the answer to “who’s upvoting them then?” seems pretty damning
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by xyzzy_plugh on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:34PM (#37384758)
I'm real confused by the comments here. Chromebooks were most definitely a good deal for schools. They are incredibly cheap; half of the appeal to me is that they are effectively disposable and don't need to be fawned over. Who cares if they can't be squeezed for the same length as a $1000 laptop? You can buy three of them.

The problem I see is that school budgets don't account for such expenses on the regular, so schools end up using hardware for years and years after EOL.

Either way, seems like a good deal to me.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by yjftsjthsd-h on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:40PM (#37384820)
> The problem I see is that school budgets don't account for such expenses on the regular, so schools end up using hardware for years and years after EOL.

That's a meaningful distinction; most hardware can keep running current software for a long time after it's theoretically EOL, but Chromebooks stop updating their software outright when the hardware falls out of support.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jraph on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:42PM (#37384854)
Everybody should care. Producing a laptop has a high environmental and human cost. A school throwing away hundreds of computer has an impact on me, you and every other living being on this planet.

A disposable laptop is an absurd concept. The idea itself should feel appalling.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by kcartlidge on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @02:42AM (#37388603)
All the technical and business arguments for or against Chromebooks are a side-show. This is the real answer. Thank you.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by FirmwareBurner on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:44PM (#37384871)
>half of the appeal to me is that they are effectively disposable and don't need to be fawned over.

Maybe there's a hidden cost to pay for making e-waste disposable hardware which is felt at the environmental level.

I'm pretty disturbed at how this waste is not considered in the rich west, as it only looks at the monetary cost of the device and not at the fact that those devices most likely end up in landfills much sooner than should be accepted.

Just becasue we can financially accept such a thing, doesn't mean we should, for the sake of the environment.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by xyzzy_plugh on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:44PM (#37385409)
I've gone through a few Chromebooks but what is, or perhaps is not, surprising is that I haven't gone through them at a meaningfully different rate than regular laptops. Given that, it seems like a net win, at least for me. You can't seriously say that the likes of HP or Dell have not simply extorting the school system for years. My Chromebooks are just as durable.

Besides, after several years of use by kids, I have a hard time imagining these things becoming anything other than waste.

And where I live in the west, I pay an additional tax for products which create e-waste (namely consumer electronics) and I must dispose of them at appropriate facilities. E-waste is definitely a problem but it's not a relevant factor here as far as I can tell.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by lozenge on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:51PM (#37384933)
What's actually expiring in these machines? They are built on known technologies like BIOS, ARM, Wi-Fi. In other computers and laptops, I can update the software for 8-10+ years before stuff gets screwy. I get that they can stop updates due to minimum RAM or display resolution requirements, but this isn't that.

This isn't the case for Android because of the SOC blob and how entwined it is with the Linux kernel, but that reasoning doesn't apply here.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jraph on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:32PM (#37384737)
I don't know about the good deal but the e-waste part was clear from the beginning. No surprise. It's written on the package.

For this reason, and the part where the children's privacy is sold to Google, and the part where the children are taught to rely on someone else's computer (in particular big US corps), and the part where the pupils need to agree to some private corp's ToS for what is mandatory and public, schools should never have signed for this. No, it was not a good deal.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by blackhaz on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:54PM (#37384963)
Could not agree more. Google is nothing but assaulting the integrity of the educational system and well-being of the children and our common future. The value is not only not added, but is taken away from the educational process. I thought Microsoft was evil in the 90s, but seeing this soulless monster of a corporation anywhere near my children feels like a freaking horror movie.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by nolist_policy on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @12:52PM (#37394534)
At least Chromebooks are secure out of the box.

It's sad Google seems to be the only player in this space who really cares about security. Every other OS is a shitshow by comparison.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by clashandcarry on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:25PM (#37384644)
For some with Intel or AMD X86 chips, Mr. Chromebox offers a BIOS that will allow another OS to be installed. I got a few more years out of Acer Chrombook with this BIOS and an 2.5" SSD upgrade.

https://mrchromebox.tech/#home

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by shams93 on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:29PM (#37384690)
This is a good point, actually I think schools should buy the leftover devices and then run linux on them so kids can be learning things like django at school.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by paulryanrogers on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:33PM (#37384744)
Kids have a lot of other important things to learn first. But perhaps for some high school elective.

One can run ChromeOS on old, used devices. They won't have quite the same security, but are a lot better than nothing.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by rcarmo on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @04:29AM (#37389225)
I’m still using one of those as an electronics workbench machine.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by INTPenis on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:24PM (#37384628)
All laptops become e-waste, why are chromebooks different? They were made with low specs, presumably they become obsolete sooner. But then again, I doubt most laptop users have their laptop more than 3 years.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by rzzzt on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:37PM (#37384798)
There is a cut-off date after which a model does not receive any further updates, and the countdown starts with the first released unit: https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/22/buying_a_chromebook_d...

It is unfortunate if you get yours eg. one year before the end of the prescribed lifecycle.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by amatecha on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:35PM (#37384775)
Coincidentally I'm about 2.5 years into daily-driving a ThinkPad X230 (made in 2012/2013 or so), which I bought secondhand and am running OpenBSD on. Computers could be used a lot longer than they typically are. This one's now surpassing 10 years :)

Relevant: "how and why I stopped buying new laptops" https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stop...

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jwells89 on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:00PM (#37385020)
Honestly the only thing stopping me from toting around an old low value laptop is their battery life, which is generally awful. The modern web making their fans get angry and noisy also isn’t great, and barrel jack PSUs are a pain compared to USB-C PD.

It’d be cool if there were efforts to sell kits that allow users to outfit old laptops with higher-capacity (but not physically larger) batteries, quieter cooling, and USB-PD.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by amatecha on Monday September 04, 2023 @09:02PM (#37386722)
Yeah for sure, it's frustrating how there aren't readily-available OEM-quality aftermarket batteries available for older laptops. On the upside as for the barrel jack connectors, you can often get multi-connector AC adapters even with variable voltage output switches. My goal is to figure out a singular solar-charged power source for all my portable devices with built-in batteries, to hopefully have some kind of device-agnostic solution, longer-term... Quite the hassle to figure it all out though!
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by joshspankit on Monday September 04, 2023 @11:38PM (#37387579)
Any CPU made around or after the time of the Core 2 Duo can still be a perfectly serviceable main computer. Back in the 90s and 00s older CPUs were literally too slow but we passed the MVP threshold around the C2D and now they’re all pretty solid.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jwells89 on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:30PM (#37384716)
Most other laptops, even low end ones, can have new life breathed into them as laptops with a lightweight Linux distribution or even take on entirely new uses like a Plex/Kodi box or retro emulator box hooked up to the TV, power efficient file server, smart home control hub, etc — basically anything one might use a Pi for, an old laptop can do just as well or better.

This is impractical on most Chromebooks because of how locked into Chrome OS they are. They're more like cheap Android phones with locked bootloaders than they are proper laptops.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by timw4mail on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:29PM (#37384688)
They definitely could have more life than the duration of the ChromeOS updates. It's an arbitrary date, not performance-based at all.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by zbrozek on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:30PM (#37384705)
That seems short to me. I build a new desktop approximately every 8 years and buy a new laptop every 5-6.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by yjftsjthsd-h on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:43PM (#37384857)
There's a difference between "this will eventually stop being usable" and "we enforced a hard cutoff for software updates, including security patches, which artificially forced a device to stop being usable". I'm typing this on a decade-old laptop that's perfectly good even though its manufacturer has long-since given up on it, precisely because it just keeps getting software updates regardless (AIUI, even Windows would still support it, so a normal user would be fine too).
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by INTPenis on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:39PM (#37385361)
You're not most laptop users though. I try to take care of my hardware, even though I've been averaging 1 laptop every 3 years the past 15. I have friends with old thinkpads too, but I don't think they represent most laptop users.

So if a school buys 100 thinkpads, and 100 chromebooks, how long do you think they will last?

They will all become e-waste sooner or later, and most likely sooner in an education environment where they're being lent out to pupils.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by yjftsjthsd-h on Monday September 04, 2023 @06:20PM (#37385678)
I have relatives who run Windows and who I believe are "normal" users who tend to replace laptops on a much longer cycle than that.

> So if a school buys 100 thinkpads, and 100 chromebooks, how long do you think they will last?

As things currently stand, both will suffer hardware failures at alarming rates because children are terrifying and have very active lifestyles, but the thinkpads will only stop being useful when the hardware dies, while the Chromebooks will be artificially capped by their software, resulting in the thinkpads outliving them.

> I fail to see how pointing the finger at chromebooks specifically is more than a distraction.

Because Chromebooks force the machine to become e-waste regardless of how worn the hardware is. Everything may suck, but they suck more and on purpose.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by kcartlidge on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @02:29AM (#37388521)
> I fail to see how pointing the finger at chromebooks specifically is more than a distraction.

They have a built-in kill switch. After pre-set number of years (from launch and not from purchase) they become useless to schools.

Macs and PCs only die when they die, not when they hit their cut-off date. At that point the other devices have resale values and 'expired' Chromebooks don't.

> There is a bigger problem at play here, a massive culture of consumption.

Then pointing the finger at Chromebooks is extremely relevant, as enforced lifetime limits lead to (relatively) rapidly replaced devices with no future beyond landfill and more consumption.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by Ferret7446 on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:13PM (#37385139)
My understanding is that the cutoff is determined by the component manufacturers refusing to provide firmware updates. Microsoft does not directly support all hardware configurations, and manufacturers have more incentive to support Windows/general purpose hardware long-term. ChromeOS has much lower market share so manufacturers have no incentive beyond what Google can incentivize monetarily (i.e., pay them to do it at a loss).
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by yjftsjthsd-h on Monday September 04, 2023 @06:22PM (#37385688)
It's also a matter of decoupling; a machine running Windows (for example) might have ancient firmware, but at least it can run a current version of Chrome and Windows, which means that it degrades gracefully.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by phpisthebest on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:44PM (#37384866)
>>I doubt most laptop users have their laptop more than 3 years.

More and more companies are moving to 4 and 5 year replacement cycle. The average today for my company is 4.5 years between replacement laptops for the average employee.

For desktops it is 7-8 with some going to 10 years for replacements.

Then they are wiped and given to employee's who continue to use them for many more years. I have given my parents one of these both are still using it, one of which was ironically reimaged from Win7 to CloudReady (now called ChomeOS Flex) and it is still going strong today more than 10 years after its manufacture date.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jzb on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:47PM (#37384903)
I tend to get new machines pretty often, but I’m also using old machines for 7-10 years. OldNew laptop becomes the bedroom/backup laptop. Bedroom laptop becomes couch surfing laptop. Or a machine gets converted to Plex duty, etc. Also I hand down machines to my kids, donate to kids at school, etc.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by ljm on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:53PM (#37384959)
Chromebooks are different because they were created by Google and you are an absolute fool to think you will get long term support from them. Or any support at all. Google has never, ever been in the business of support.

I’m surprised that the mention of Google hasn’t yet tarnished a brand. They’re just a big tech incumbent.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by xaqar on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:28PM (#37384679)
This article is a lot of FUD. Look at this list and see how many devices have a date of 2030!

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by RugnirViking on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:19PM (#37384576)
interesting. Just how cheap are they, and how cut down can we make them, and are they easy to jailbreak? I'd love to play around with some for making into servers or even pi-like things for robotics
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by deelowe on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:23PM (#37384622)
They are not easy to jailbreak. Many can't run Linux natively due to hardware restrictions.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by DHowett on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:31PM (#37384727)
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/wri...

Chromebooks are among the better-documented and more open hardware platforms. The document above indicates how to disable firmware write protection both within and without the operating system.

It also includes this quote:

> Since the start of the project, the Chrome OS team strongly believes that when someone buys a device, they own it fully. ... To that end, we strongly believe that users must be free to fully program their device in any way they want.

Can you point to any ChromeOS devices that have violated this principle?

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by mdwalters on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:41PM (#37384839)
>> [...] we strongly believe that users must be free to fully program their device in any way they want.

If this is the case, then why doesn't Google provide an official utility to install another OS on it?

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by deelowe on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @10:28AM (#37392158)
I don't have the model in front of me, but many lenovo chromebooks cannot have any other OS installed.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by als0 on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:23PM (#37384621)
They can be as cheap as $89 at Walmart.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by RugnirViking on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:23PM (#37384627)
I was thinking more about second hand ones. i'd love to pick up a bulk of 10 or 20 them if it wont be an enormous pain to jailbreak them all
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by alchemist1e9 on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:52PM (#37384947)
I have such an ambition also. There was a link recently to models which can be flashed and run pure Linux kernels.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by traverseda on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:59PM (#37385010)
https://mrchromebox.tech/#devices

You probably want one that supports uefi firmware, which I think is libreboot.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by yjftsjthsd-h on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @12:16AM (#37387783)
It's coreboot, plus I think tianocore/edk2 to provide UEFI
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jacobwilliamroy on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:24PM (#37384632)
I have an Acer Chromebook. It dual boots into debian but in order to remove the chrome OS I think I have to unscrew some part and then short a couple of pins somewhere. This is the best I can remember. I read those instructions like 6 years ago and never bothered to try and follow them.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by mdwalters on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:30PM (#37384707)
Really? All it took for me was to format `/dev/mmcblkp1` to use Fedora 38 exclusively.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jraph on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:38PM (#37384802)
Yes, it was a thing on some models. It was easy to do, but opening a laptop can be scary to many people and it voided the warranty.

At least it was possible to hack the devices, but no such bullshit is ever necessary on any regular laptop.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by phpisthebest on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:49PM (#37384919)
>>and it voided the warranty.

Opening the laptop would not void any warranty in the EU, or US.

That is FUD. Manufacturers can not prevent people from "opening their devices" with threats of voiding warranty, and even putting the stickers that say that are illegal for which the FTC sent a latter to many manufacturers including Apple to tell them to knock that off.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jraph on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:51PM (#37384940)
Good to know.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jacobwilliamroy on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:35PM (#37384763)
Oh it looks so easy now. Like I said it's been a few years since I read those instructions so things have probably changed. And I haven't actually used my chromebook since I lost the power cable in 2019.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by 0xcde4c3db on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:59PM (#37385006)
Last time I looked into this, some models came with UEFI or BIOS booting built into the board firmware and just needed a flag set in developer mode on Chrome OS, but on other models this code was either absent or too buggy to be usable. On those models, you needed to flash an updated/modded version of the firmware, which usually required removing a specific screw that doubles as a jumper to enable/disable writing the chip.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by 23B1 on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:27PM (#37384672)
Wait till you hear what happens to all the other devices in the world!
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by mdwalters on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:12PM (#37384498)
I believe it's the planned obsolecense feature's fault for turning Chromebooks into e-waste.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by throwaway4220 on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:18PM (#37384563)
This lies squarely with Google. I bought a fully functional 11 inch acer intel touchscreen Chromebook for 25 on eBay which got its last update last year. I converted it to Ubuntu which was a pain
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by vorticalbox on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:18PM (#37384568)
I have a perfectly good chromebook for a few years ago that is just sat in a box becuase it's running a super old version of chromeOS.

I could just install Linux but the battery is definitely worse when not on chromeOS

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by baz00 on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:22PM (#37384618)
They were always a terrible deal for schools. They were just a less terrible deal that the original status quo, at least here in the UK, of overpriced education supplier sourced PCs and unnecessary use of VMware.

Surely we can do better than this both software and hardware wise.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by WalterBright on Monday September 04, 2023 @04:54PM (#37384965)
Teachers are always looking for a way to teach without doing any work. And the students want to learn without making any effort.

It'll never work.

All that is needed for teaching is a teacher with a blackboard, and a student with pencil and paper. Right up through quantum mechanics.

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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by jdougan on Friday September 08, 2023 @08:05PM (#37440857)
The greatest school in history was a log with a student at one end, and Socrates on the other.
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Re:Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’r... by traverseda on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:05PM (#37385058)
I wonder if you could install chromeos flex on these eol devices.
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