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

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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