Chromebooks Were Once a Good Deal for Schools. Now They’re Becoming E-Waste

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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