How to deorbit the Chromebook... and repurpose it for innovators Space junk grabs headlines. There's a lot of space hardware alive and dead – 9,064 objects at the time of writing according to the Orbiting Now tracker – and cleaning it up at end of life is the focus of a number of bizarrely nautical technology proposals like sails, harpoons and nets, more at home on an 18th century whaling …
This article is a very good start ; now, how about a serious follow-up article on how to install a good Linux distribution (such as Linux Mint, MX-Llinux, Ubuntu, ...) on a good, lower-priced (pick one) Chromebook.
This being The Register, one could assume, correctly, that you do not need to worry about the readers' minimal technical skills required to put such an article to very good use.
My personal opinion. El Reg, is that your readership--old(er) and young, alike--would be forever in your debt.
p.s.: don't forget to tell us how, and where, to find Google's notorious, UN-advertized "use-by", End-Of-Life, date which exists for every Chromebook.
[p.p.s.: It goes without saying--make absolutely certain that this article is written by a hardware-oriented person, and not one who simply writes about computer subjects, without '...ever getting his hands dirty."]
Not to put too fine a point on this...
...don't just get a "...hardware-oriented person...", but get a person who not only has a track-record of installation of Linux on all kinds of machines, but one who has an enviable reputation as a top-notch writer AND explainer of what it is he or she is doing; how they did what they did; what kind of problems to look out for...
There are many people--here--who are all too willing to give us their personal opinions and personal interpretations regarding 'soft' technical matters (usually operating systems, applications, and 'trends"), but none--so far--have shown any propensity at giving us hard technical facts and guidance on hard technical subject matter.
Your biggest problem, El Reg, is actually finding someone who has these required characteristics. There aren't many left.
...and, El Reg, even though you have access to some good writers, none are up to meeting the dual criteria of being "...a top-notch writer AND explainer...' on a subject such as this.
The hands-down best examples of such writing are the works of a gentleman, JA Watson, whose works can be found in his column at ZDNet entitled "Jamie's Mostly Linux Stuff", as well as elsewhere, as a contributor. Most people agree that reading one of his articles on the installation of a Linux distro is tantamount to being there and looking over his shoulder as he works, while having everything he does clearly explained to you (Mr Watson, sadly, stopped writing a couple of years ago, but simply cf. "Jamie's Mostly Linux Stuff" on the internet, as well as other 'bread-crumbs' re JA Watson).
If you are even considering an article such as this, El Reg, you'll have to get outside help. You don't have the talent capability in-house.
I'm surprised they didn't pick up on the fact that there are already a good few third party cuts of Linux designed to install on Chromebooks, most of which aren't that brain melting to install (although I gave up trying to install macOs with OpenCore on a Mac, so it may just be that I'm old and tired and like taking the path of least resistance these days).
Of course none of these distros can actually be installed on the Samsung Chromebooks we actually bought, because they're the one model Samsung managed to completely and utterly lock down, but hey, you can't have everything can you?
Thank you VERY much; this is a great start!
Would you, or anyone, have any suggestions as to the best quality used Chromebook; ie, "most-best" characteristics for the money? Screen size and high-resolution are not among my high priorities. More websites such as this, RAM size, hard-drive/SSD size, processor, and non-wonky operation --vs a 'standard' laptop--are (think "ease of printing", which was/is a real problem for Chromebooks, as I understand).
TL;DR--the very best used Chromebook for the least amount of money.
Anybody?
Everybody?
Keep them cards and letters coming, folks...
Keep an eye on ebay, and government auction sites. You'll often find them selling ultra-cheap, because people think that once they've gone EOL support, they're dead. If you have access to various laptop parts like M.2 drives and RAM, you can even go for the more basic ones and upgarde it yourself.
Just make sure whatever model you find on ebay, is listed on MrChromebox's site.
It may look budget but I am very happy with an Acer CB315 3H which I bought about 2 years ago. Don't buy new, look for someone selling one because they can't break themselves out of the clutches of Apple or Microsoft.
touch screen and usb-c charger. It uses the tiny charger for my mobile phone when travelling and is slim and just fits in side of the free carry-on bag on Ryanair.
speakers are acceptable. it works with headphones/mic from my phone for Voip. 12 hour battery life. It is in support up until 2029.
it works with a canon pixma wireless printer/scanner. I picked my printer up for €12.
If I need to log in to work while away then I use WTS to log on to work windows environment on the chromebook. I would not dream of bringing a windows laptop with me.
CB314 is basically same chromebook with 14" screen, no num pad and 300grams lighter.
From the "FAQ" section of MrChromebox.tech (https://mrchromebox.tech/) referenced further down--
“Q: I want to buy a Chromebook to run Windows or Linux -- which should I buy?
A: Buying any Chromebook with the intention of running Windows or Linux is not a great idea. Many can't boot anything other than ChromeOS; Those that can boot Linux (or Windows) often have functional deficiencies -- DO NOT EXPECT EVERYTHING TO WORK OUT OF THE BOX. Older models may fair [sic] better compatibility wise, but there are still lots of caveats, and it's not recommended to buy a Chromebook as a cheap Linux device.
That said, here's a handy spreadsheet that's reasonably up to date detailing Linux compatibility...."
I work with hundreds of Chromebooks and have for about 10 years. The thought of having 10 years of support might just change my advice from “go get the cheapest one” to thinking about investing in something more durable with a semi decent processor. The battery, that’s the problem really.
I had one student who used one of the early Samsung units for 9 years! Best AUD$295 ever. It was slow by the end but the student was happy, it just worked and he didn’t see the point getting a new one at that point.
Whether an old Chromebook (or any old computer) is good enough depends on one thing. What the user needs. With an efficient OS, any computer from pretty much the late 90s on will be more than adequate if the user just needs to do some basic office work. If you don't mind the DOS command line, you can still use any computer from the early 80s on, but you'd need to get hold of decent dos based software. Not sure what legal options exist for things like Word Processing now. That said, you can probably get a pirate copy of Wordstar or Wordperfect in various places.. I'm not going to look, as I am at work, and I run the risk of setting off various detection systems we have, if I go to known dodgy sites.
I have a dislike of throwing stuff out (much to the ire of SWMBO), so my attic has several boxes containing old software - all legal, much of it DOS and early Windows, and repacked with instruction manuals (remember them - PRINTED ones?) in original boxes. I'd love to pass it on to somewhere it might be used but nobody seems interested so it will probably end up at the council recycling centre/tip.
Borland Paradox, WordPerfect, CorelDraw, MathCAD, Quattro Pro, Photoshop, etc...
What about these people in Swindon
https://www.museumofcomputing.org.uk/
They might be interested...
The bletchley park museum were super enthusiastic when I gave them some LSMD filters for their big old drive cabinets that lived in the attic...
Sadly I'd thrown the data pacs away - as I thought... "no ones ever going to use these anymore"... how wrong I was !.
A coworker died unexpectedly and I helped clean out his cellar full of good stuff. 3 racks of which was an HP 2100 computer with its toggle switches and punched tape drive. I called up a computer museum and they said well we have rooms of them but if you mail it to us we'll try to find a place for it.......which didn't happen.
... the drivers for many peripherals did not come with source code and a GPL license. It took years of whacking away with a clue bat until OEMs got the message: no GPL drivers, no sale.
Grey beards die off and get replaced PFYs who do not always understand the value of what was achieved. Now it is the customers who need to be whacked with clue bats until they understand they can expect and demand more from OEMs.
I mentor at a Coder Dojo. I have spent this year collecting old laptops (remarkably easy to get free donations; remarkably easy to uplift the memory and an SSD).
Out of a dozen machines donated, maybe half were Chromebooks. We put Mint on them and they were immediately useful.
We love the R-Pi, but they take a lot more volunteer time to set up and test before each session, and pack away afterwards. We will probably delay introducing them until the kids are experienced enough to do the setup and test themselves.
Latest acquisition: a doll's house, for teaching girls about electricity and how to install lighting (LEDS; don't panic).
I remember getting all excited when my sister suggested I might like to run some lighting into her dolls' house, more years ago than I care to remember. I think the plan was to use a 6V battery (one of the big ones with spring terminals, PJ996?) and some torch bulbs. My boys never wanted an actual dolls' house, but they were perfectly happy to build Lego houses and install minifigure families...
M.
I think your one liner actually glossed over the requirement was to get more girls interested in electrics and thus doing “the Blokey thing”.
As Katrina’s notes, just need to be a little careful with the labels. As the use of a model environment can really help in linking concepts and tech to real world scenarios. I remember from school how some kids “not good at maths” became very proficient at mental arithmetic after a few weeks of playing darts and having to work out their score and the combinations of numbers they needed to get out.
There are two sorts of doll houses. Type 'A' is a horrible plasticy plaything that doesn't represent a real house but is just something that traditional parents give their girls. Type 'B' is often a product of a Victorian or Edwardian craftsperson and is a work of art. I've seen collections of these artifacts in museums and they can hold your interest for hours. I have no idea why people make them -- they're not really kids' toys -- but I expect its the same sort of thing that causes people to build extensive model railroad layouts (or, come to think of it, fully operational fine scale steam locomotives).
There are two sorts of doll houses
And type 'C' which is a few bits of plywood slotted together with holes cut for doorways. Can be adapted by the child for their own needs (could potentially make something even easier out of modelling card or similar), decorated, enlarged, even packed away flat when no longer of interest. Bound to be some plans out there somewhere.
And type 'D' which youngest built in Minecraft from the plans for our actual house, before said actual house had been built. Remarkably good at giving a "feel" for the spaces and how they work together.
M.
Can I join your class? I started on Linux in university and I'm now very comfortable messing around with software and operating systems, but I never quite got past the "electronics are scary and also for boys" phase, and now I don't really know where to start. (And I make miniatures, so I may be an adult but I'd still want to set up a dollhouse! It's actually what got me to start at least trying, now; I managed a very simple circuit with two LEDs and one of those giant batteries, but I don't know how to actually install it or have it turn on and off)
Happy to help - do you have a Makerspace/Hackspace/FermiLab/Coder Dojo near you? There you will find people who help you take the next step. And you may enjoy the usual eccentricity of steampunkers, LARPers, stop motion addicts, robot builders, mainframe restorers, and other entertaining loonies.
"you may enjoy the usual eccentricity of steampunkers, LARPers, stop motion addicts, robot builders, mainframe restorers, and other entertaining loonies."
Or you may not.
Sound a lot like working in a university department doing IT or technical support. Quickly loses its gloss but at least you are paid for your tolerance. :)
Odds are that you lost this person with "...And you may enjoy the usual eccentricity of steampunkers, LARPers, stop motion addicts, robot builders, mainframe restorers, and other entertaining loonies."
All these "different" [very] individuals--and, most definitely "loonies"--are precisely why people of the female persuasion, as well as a very large percentage of male types, do NOT frequent such venues. Perhaps not being made to feel welcome, from the "get-go"--because of (a) not being a loonie, and (b) good, plain, old-fashioned misogyny--play a big part in this.
Sorry, DV, but that last sentence makes me want to puke. The dollhouse is the best vector for teaching girls, eh?
I wouldn't just not send my kids, I would actively discourage others from sending theirs if your "dojo" was in my neighborhood.
You are completely missing the point.
So the downvotes represent comfort with the idea that -any- educational concept should be wrapped around gendered stereotypes (let alone STEM), segregated similarly, and that a teacher who tends to think that girls alone would be drawn to a dollhouse (etc.) is well prepared to welcome and meet a diverse group of learners where their interests intersect with the course material.
Nice. I really had no idea that Reg Readers were such an ignorant and out of touch bunch of idiots.
Quoting "So the downvotes represent comfort with the idea that -any- educational concept should be wrapped around gendered stereotypes (let alone STEM), segregated similarly, and that a teacher who tends to think that girls alone would be drawn to a dollhouse (etc.) is well prepared to welcome and meet a diverse group of learners where their interests intersect with the course material.
Nice. I really had no idea that Reg Readers were such an ignorant and out of touch bunch of idiots."
My dear https://forums.theregister.com/user/74046/, I bow before your superior wisdom, not to mention your superior attitude.
Let's hear your explanation of why girls who enjoy programming and tech at age 7 to 9-ish suddenly lose interest at around 10-11. And do tell us what your actual experience in the matter actually is?
I am describing a known problem in the Coder Dojo movement, that the Raspberry Pi Foundation that sponsors Coder Dojo is very concerned about. At our most recent conference, no-one had a solution.
So, dear Code for Broke, we are all waiting fo you to come down from your mountain and hand us your solution on tablets of stone.
I will not be waiting for you - I will be getting on with trying to do something about it.
educational concept should be wrapped around gendered stereotypes
Not that they *should*, no... only that there's nothing wrong with trying it out and seeing if it increases interest.
Those who are doing good work, at least trying something, should not be berated for doing so.
Political correctness is not a suicide pact.
In my personal experience, you can try to be as unisex as possible, there will be an age where the girl NEEDs barbies, My little ponies, doll houses etc, while the little boy can not live without matchbox cars, nerf guns etc. At this point, said toys of horror can be used successfully as entry ponts for other skills and knowledge. This is what I guess that GreyWolf is doing. These are not 16 year old girls being expected to play with dolls. These are much younger girls being introduced to tech via a medium which, while maybe not is too personally interesting, at least is acceptable among their peers.
Do note that fixing up second hand barbie dolls can easily be replaced with a desire to properly weather a 1:35 FlakPanzer Gephard so that it fits on a scratch built diorama a couple of years later.
The doll house is a prop, a tool , not a goal.
Electricity - how not to do it, with Reg Prescott
remarkably easy to uplift the memory and an SSD
Just revitalised some ancient laptops with the simple swap of HDD for SSD. Then "them above" went and mandated WPA3 for the WiFi connection and I'm blowed if I can get them to connect. Toying with the idea of fitting a new WiFi card (with the added benefit of 5GHz) but I'm not certain that will solve the problem as several much newer laptops have also been kicked off the WiFi.
M.
I've just retired my Acer C720 Chromebook, which has been my backpack companion for just short of 10 years. Back then it was possible to flash a custom BIOS (SeaBIOS?) and then install a standard Linux distro. I gather it's not so simple now.
The only thing wrong with it is a lack of memory - 2GB (soldered-in) is very limiting nowadays.
It's still not hard.
The nice thing about Linux is that if you're careful about choosing the right 'distro' (Linux distribution), you can have an amazingly powerful computer which has 'only' 2 GB of ram.
One 'light(er)-weight' 'distro' which runs amazingly well on a lot of 2 GB machines is MX-Linux (and, as one would expect, runs like the proverbial "bat out of hell" on more-modern machines} "MX" also has been ranked as the #1 distribution for many years on the defacto distro-ranking website, Distrowatch--here.
For a really good article on the use of (the right distro of) Linux on an older machine, see "MX Linux MX-18 & 10-year-old EeePC netbook - Fantastic", here.
"...Just don’t expect to run a modern GUI on it."
I agree with you, and absolutely.
Debian is a fine choice, and can work very well on older machines. Your last sentence, though, serves both as a warning and an explanation as to why it might not be the best choice for someone who is not as 'technically literate' as you (or not technically literate at all); and should serve to provide "newbies" (we both should be able to hear, very loud and very clearly, "...but what's a GUI?") with adequate warning that choosing a suitable distro to work very well on a fairly "challenged" machine is not an easy task--but, still, a very rewarding one if the right choices are made.
I've been doing--and teaching--this stuff for thirty years. I'm still a newbie; still learning. The most important thing I have learned is to not assume the student knows what I--and others--think should be obvious.
10 year old EeePC netbook...
Make that 15 years ago - if you went down the beach...
As the Distrowatch site makes clear, their "rankings" are based only on the number of clicks the distrowatch page for each distro gets. What they don't make clear is that this creates a situation where the #1 distro on the list stays there for a very long time, but only because new and non-regular visitors see the list and click on the top distro if they aren't very familiar with it.
Don't get me wrong, MX is a fine distro (or so I've heard), but the Distrowatch ranking means next to nothing. If we were able to find a ranking of distros that was based on how many people actually use it, I would be surprised if MX was in the top 10.
I did my C720, too! A bit of aluminum foil to jumper a couple of pins let me re-flash to SeaBIOS. After that, I installed OpenBSD and FreeDOS, both of which work well with relatively-limited memory. Oh, and no swap partition. I haven't had any problems from that. My current problems with it are that the trackpad mouse-buttons are beginning to go flakey, and the (internal) battery is losing capacity.
Note to other vultures: the C720 as all 12 F-keys and all the other function keys (PrtScn, SysReq, Insert, Delete, etc.). Modern Chromebooks have only F-keys 1..10.
This was years ago, btw. It was tricky installing, and every boot came up with a choice that would exit developer mode, erasing your hard work in the process. He used it for a few years till one day he hit the wrong button and debian was defenestrated.
"Built down to a price, they're simple to open up and the components are cheap and widely available"
Parts are certainly not cheap and are often impossible to find e.g. £100 plus for a Lenovo keyboard or every parts supplier we talk to saying they can't get any parts for certain HP models. When you can get a new 14" Chromebook for around £250 repairing is often not a financially viable solution.
Chromebook start up times and battery life make them great for Education but because they're 'built down to a price' they don't withstand the abuse students give them as well as traditional laptops e.g. we've got over 100 Dell E5430 laptops still in service after nearly ten years (granted many have had SSD conversion, extra RAM, replacement batteries and new keyboards etc).
We're still trying to work out the best balance between Chromebooks and laptops. Realistically, even with 10 years Google support, the Chromebooks will end up on a faster replacement cycle.
Buying new parts is never going to make sense for something like that. If you're a school IT manager you're buying them in lots of hundreds, and you can mix and match parts from broken ones. Keyboard breaks on one, display breaks on another, presto you now having a working one and some parts that can go into others. If it is the same thing breaking on them all then that's just bad luck I guess.
This assumes you or your team (if you have a "team") have the time available for that type of work. If not maybe that's something you could get an interested parent who is knowledgeable enough to perform that sort of work to volunteer their time. Not all volunteering at school has to be about chaperoning kids when they go off campus or baking stuff for fundraising.
"buying them in lots of hundreds" - that's a massive assumption but I would love to have that kind of budget. We only have around 500 laptops/chromebooks in school and apart from the occasional motherboard failure any parts requiring replacement are because of vandalism.
We very rarely buy parts for Chromebooks (because of the costs I already mentioned) and my team are very adept at transplanting parts from scrapped devices.
Would mention that there's a Debian VM just one tickbox away from out-of-the-box on ChromeOS these days.
The (relative) long support of ChromeOs is why I picked up a cheap 2-in-1 Chromebook (family use) as opposed to cheap tablet + keyboard case.
So, I have a longterm supported OS, a Linux system to play with, *and* access to Andoid apps. Pretty much the best of all worlds at the moment, particularly for the price.
*Do* need to change the privacy settings from the defaults and set Duckduckgo (for example) as the standard search engine though.
When my armchair-based netbook kicked the bucket, I took a look on eBay for recently support-expired Chromebooks, expecting them to be cheap. But sellers were paying no mind to the end of updates, and expired ones were around the same price as ones with a year or two of updates remaining.
Android Studio, VS Code... even Audacity for a quick bit of sound editing, or Wireguard and qBittorent for some impromptu piracy... they're remarkably "not bad".
Add in Android support, and you've got something considerably more versatile than a content consumption device with a keyboard - which is how most people view them. For a vocal minority of people I suspect ChromeOS is dead in the water because of Google's involvement - which I see as no better or worse than Apple or Microsoft.
I'm particularly fond of my Pixelbook Go.
There seems to be an unfortunate lack of affordable (say, below $550) ARM-based laptops with adequate everyday specs (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 1080p, 15.6" screen, Cortex-A76+ CPU) out there. Those are quite plentiful for Core-i3,i5,i7 and Ryzen 7, but not ARM for some reason. Wasn't it the original promise of the ARM collective back in the day, that it would lead to a bonanza of inexpensive, yet performant, portable machines for everyday use (I want one!)? It's odd (IMHO) that there is basically a range vacuum between Chromebooks (low-end) and the expensive high-end (Apple, Qualcomm). No?
Which are probably fine from an hardware point of view, but what about windows? I mean, windows will surely need a new hardware every 5 years (they have to suck your money, after all) and unless you are fine using Linux (as I am) then you will not get 10 years of "official" support.
I have a cheap Celeron-based Windows box. It came with Windows 10. Seven years ago. It supports Windows 11. It runs Windows 11 just fine. It will continue having that support until Windows 11 itself is put out, which is at least five years from now and probably quite a few more than that. So minimum twelve years, after which I can either get Windows 12 to run on it, which is probably possible, or simply use the Linux partition which also works without any need to hack the bootloader and can run the latest mainline kernel. If it dies before then, it will be a hardware, not software problem. I don't think I'm telling you something you don't know.
Correction, the 7 years was a mistake because I was thinking of how many years between the manufacturing (2018) and Windows 10 expiration (2025) and then stated it incorrectly as this year. So I've had it for five years, but the total of twelve remains.
I agree with you. My second laptop is a budget ASUS thingy, very easy to wipe out Windows and install Linux of choice, dual boot is also easy if that's your thing. When I look at similar performing Chromebooks, the price is the same but wiping ChromeOS and installing Linux is hit or miss, because of touch screen and other hardware gymnastics. Not many tablets listed here: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ . Crostini is interesting but then you still have the spyware running.
But I'm all for repurposing old tech. If I already had a Chromebook today (shudder), after it became EOL I would definitely try Linux on it rather than scrapping it.
10 year old Windows laptops still work fine. When MS upgrades for them end, they work better than new ones.
As for a promise of 10 years of support. Don't be surprised if they are 'forced' to curtail support and polish them off, to protect people from a potential vuln that they cannot fix, or because of government regulatory changes to protect children, privacy or national security.
A plug and go USB device to repurpose an old Chromebook? Governments are pushing for limitations on tech. Powerful, cheap hardware in the hands of the masses?! Are you some sort of terrorist enabler?! It could empower the masses at the expense of centralised control. Nice idea last decade. Now we are all a lot more Chinese and Best Leaders would not approve. Another couple of years and you won't be allowed to connect to the net with anything other than the latest mainstream OS, an approved browser and a license to surf. Because security/privacy/children/harms.
For those of you who were too busy to notice, cool tech is over. Restrictions are now trending. Less is more.
Did the writer of this article take account of the likelihood that all those scrapped Chromebooks would not be quite, what is the expression, fit for purpose because of not being gently handled? Cracked screens, abused and contaminated keyboards, broken hinges, destroyed data ports and other motherboard issues, and of course the horrors of old batteries.
People and electronics are a bad mixture. It's no coincidence that in the days of photocopiers, having the copier in a locked room with a designated operator, however inconvenient it was for the "got to have it right away" brigade, improved the MTBF immensely. Now we have the same problems with printers ("How was I to know it needed special transparency sheets?").
Debian would be a good choice;mi t would look nifty. RacyPuppy is VERY good,with lots of tools, and free. Maybe another flavor would be nice; suggestions?
we need a live USB stick version. a readmefile and a image of what the old firmware thinks is a restor of ChromeOS- but surprise, surprise, you're a,Linux box now!
And the source recoups the beer and pizza money by SELLPINGvthe sticks with everything all ready to go.
Let us know when the tool is available, U have a nice 720 on the shelf- abandoned by GOO gle, works perfectly.
We own our systems; Google does not own us- nor the dread lords of Apple or microsloth.
HURRAH LINUX!
Its those lower case keys - the screw with your head. Mandatory dilbert cartoon about paradigm shifting without a clutch but apparently the cartoonist responsible never existed. Given the kerfuffle about dolls' houses I shouldn't like to suggest otherwise.
3V DC and leds really? Sugar coating... three phase 240V AC and synchronous machines a proper education if sometimes truncated.
GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel phones, so I wouldn't expect them to be very good at dealing with Chromebooks. With both Android phones and Chromebooks, you have a bunch of manufacturer and model specific roadblocks, meaning that knowing what is supported relies on knowing the very specific model of hardware you have and hoping that the guides online are similarly detailed.
Make school library screens 4 kids schools. 120 GB ssds cost about 15 dollars these days and can be paired with raspberry pi type computers onto the chromebook screens in pretty raw fandangled reliable electronic assemblages. If you repurpose 100 million Chromebooks inside heavy cement cubes that are inconvenient to steal inside the schools that educate the future children that make the future wars and the future recessions and crimes around the world that's a good thing.
Rpi+ssd+trackpad+arduino+lcd ctrl+glass is 80 usd per school library ... Add solar nrg and cement n metal its 150, lasts years educated street kids all day
Needs a custom digital library gui for rpi :(
For those needing to reflash the firmware of newer chromebooks to allow non signed booting with linux installers, a simple USB C to USB A debug cable is required.
The genuine SuzyQ cable with a built in hub can be hard to find and expensive, but DIY versions are easy to build and open source hardware designs are in the wild, i.e.
github.com/erichVK5/erichVK5-suzy-Q-cable-v1
You should also google MrChromebox, who has instructions and a github repo for the latest hardware versions and installer scripts.
github.com/MrChromebox
Dude you're an idiot :
" .. ctional life is as bad for profits as retirees are for the national economy: "
This is not only insulting it shows your complete ignorance.
Apologies are quite required.
When you get kids you'll see the value of those retirees when they're repeatedly saving your rear end.
You're a jerk , deal with it.
What you may not have noticed was that it was comparing two views that most people, including the author, would oppose. Manufacturers viewing old equipment as a burden and institutions seeing old people as a burden are both undervaluing them in a harmful way. The comparison was not arguing for the latter point.
Back in 2013 I was deciding whether to buy a 15" Macbook Pro or a Chromebook Pixel. They were about the same base price (the Pixel was fancy for a Chromebook), the hardware was comparable. But I could spec the MBP with 1TB of (removable) storage, while the Pixel only had 32GB of soldered SSD.
I went with the MBP and I still use it daily (it's my videoconference and Powerpoint machine). It's not receiving OS updates any more but is still getting security patches. Meanwhile the Chromebook went out of support in 2018, and the 32GB SSD meant that I couldn't have done very much with it even if I installed Linux.
Things have improved on the storage front, but there are still Chromebooks with 64GB or 128GB of soldered SSD. Which is better if you want to use them for some appliance function, but not so good as a daily driver.
Now if all machines were forced to include upgradeable storage, then things might be different...
It is NOT the storage, Luke...2
I own an Asus EeePC with 2GB of ram and 32GB of SSD; running Linux. One of the best, and most reliable machines I own, and use...regularly.
2 It IS the bloated, bug-ridden (because all the bugs from the last 6-month version are still there and will never be fixed), "If-it-ain't-the-latest-it-ain't-the-greatest" operating system which most users feel they absolutely must have in order to convince themselves and their think-alike friends that they are technology wizards.
OS bloat is not the biggest part of it. Part of it is that we users generate files. My OSes take up a relatively small part of my disk, whereas the files I've collected take up significantly more. Even if the operating system managed to fit in 128 kilobytes of storage, it wouldn't take people long to fill the rest of the 32 GB drive with other software they want to run and the files on which they're running it. You can, with effort, ruthlessly eliminate files you don't think you'll need, push other files to other systems, external drives, and cloud storage, and compress everything you're not using right this minute. That just makes the experience worse while not at all preventing the drive from still being too small.
With all due respect, OS bloat IS the biggest part of it.
All one need do is compare the sizes of outstanding OSs of ten years ago with those of today.
One of the best, 'tightest' OSs ever written was/is Mint Linux 13, "Maya", whose maximum size was less than 900 MB (depending on 'desktop'--Xfce/Cinnamon/Mate); and 32/64-bit version). Mint 21.3, today, averages around 2900+ MB (2.9 GB+).
No need going to go into who's responsible for this, but the short--and extremely accurate--answer is...we are. We demand newer, faster, more powerful OSs, and the distro developers respond with software which is too large to reasonably produce every 6 months, so it's filled with bugs which the developers don't have time to respond to, (and there simply is no room in the schedule for validation testing, or Q-A) because they're too busy working on that NEXT bigger, faster, more powerful version...
Of course, the hardware manufacturers and web-browser developers are delighted, because all these ever-larger operating systems means they must--or can--respond in kind (and, parenthetically, none of today's web-browsers will even run on Linux Mint 13--Maya).
We users lose, in all respects. We get what we ask for, but the price is far too high.
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"Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important." --Fred Brooks
"Complexity is not a goal. I don't want to be remembered as an engineer of complex systems." --David L.Parnas
“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” --Edsger W. Dijkstra
Those figures prove the point. Increasing the OS size by 2 GB, even if that does represent a 200% increase, is not making too much of a dent in a 32 GB drive. Even if I start increasing that a lot more, there'd still be plenty of room on that drive. The OS takes up part of it, but a lot of it is stuff the user chooses to put there, whether that's software to do things the OS doesn't already do or files, primarily media. A photo collection can easily take up that size of disk; while I don't have one, I've helped others who have gigabytes of photos so I know people do it. Again, consider what a system would look like if the OS had a separate disk which couldn't be used for anything else, but left the main disk entirely for user software and files. Would a 32 GB disk be fine even if it didn't have to store any OS on it? I contend that it would not.
All storage systems--hard drives, USB thumb drives, your computer's RAM--have limits, and will 'fill up' eventually.
It's a 'human-condition' problem to want to store everything--photos, videos, files you are certain you'll want; either "...real soon now...", or some day. Imposing discipline on yourself to NOT store all that important stuff is extremely hard, and one of the best examples of, as the British say, a 'fool's errand'. [Hey, I'm one of the world's worst; I've got an email system so filled with messages from the last ice age I'm afraid that my provider will one day nuke everything; and download-able, ready-to-install ISO files--on my hard drive--of operating systems which haven't even existed for years]
Large-capacity, physically small, external, and very portable USB hard drives are readily available, inexpensive (even the SSD variety), and seem to be the answer to the problem of keeping a computer's valuable limited resources available for the really important tasks for which it is intended--and for which you purchased it.
One of the small, high-capacity USB hard drive's most endearing qualities is that it doesn't take up much room, and you can toss it in the same drawer with all those 'thumb-drives' you've been keeping for years...and then forget what's on it, too.
it's a 'human-condition' problem to want to store everything--photos, videos, files you are certain you'll ....
No it is not. Some humans, under some circumstances maybe. Others just the opposite.
Some people want to horde everything, equipment, emails, whatever,. Some nothing. Most of us somewhere between. ( I admit I tend more to the "If in doubt chuck it out" end)
We used to have battles over this sort of thing when I was working. Any times we had a skip I'd chuck any old stuff that we hadn't used within memory. And a member of staff would try to retrieve it because "We might need it some day".
My tests were to ask "When, in what circumstances,do you think we might need it. And, "If it was to become useful again would you remember we had it and where to find it"?
And without a definitive answer to each of these, out it goes.
I'm much the same at home. That old plastic jug, we never use- goes. And so on.
With (non-legally required) files my rule was and is, " Could I envisage serious regret without it?"
So most emails and the saved copies of letters are dumped within a short time of the end of their usefulness. Family photos, however, mostly get the full backup treatment- but even there I'll thin out some. Like if I happen to see a really crap photo that is like lots of others and doesn't serve to carry a memory it will go.Especially from the cloud backup locations.
In all fairness, it's intended that user files will stored remotely ("cloud storage") and the local storage is only for OS+apps.
They're not intended for something like large video editing so the lack of local storage isn't really an issue.
McNealy's prediction wasn't far off the mark.
I also used to have an EeePC 901 (Ubuntu IIRC installed). It was great, truly portable, and had less specs than contemporary Chromebooks. I even used it for serious work (web development) hooked to keyboard, monitor and proper mouse in the office.
Chromium OS is a spyware-free libre build of Chrome OS. Lacks a few useful features, but it works.
What we need now is unlocked libre Chromiumbook hardware to go with it, replaceable off-the-shelf battery included.
Risc V CPU instruction set even better.
No obstacle to linux dual-boot.
Personally I'd die for one in the old 7" screen Filofax-size netbook form factor, keyboard design by the legendary Martin Riddiford.
<wakes from happy dream, wipes tear from eye and goes to put kettle on />
99.9% of laptop users are interested in what the laptop can do for them..................
......they could not care less about the hardware or the OS........
This article is written by (and for) geeks who have nothing better to do than debate....................the hardware and the OS!!!
Not so much. If that were the case, Chromebook sales wouldn't be primarily from education. If everyone who basically spends all their time in a browser bought a Chromebook, there would be a lot more of them around. People are interested in the OS. Maybe because they have software that needs a specific one, maybe because they want the familiar, maybe because they know that one allows room for expansion and the other doesn't, but they are using some assumption about the OS to make their decision.
Be your own vendor: Build your own ChromeOS distro and image server (Linux Foundation talk from, IIRC, 2014)
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jSUJteAjEgHCFyx6VsqhWmNGTKipvTmAdsoW0gme7qA/edit?usp=sharing
In this talk, I discuss rekeying your chromebook, so it only runs your own distro; building your own chromeos and signing it; and even setting up your own over-the-air update server.
Sadly, the year I gave that talk, the conference lost all the videos so they never got posted :-(
While I was at google, my interns worked to build various non-chromebook distros for chromebooks, including Nichrome, https://github.com/u-root/nichrome, and webboot, https://github.com/u-root/webboot. We rekeyed the chromebooks such that they would only run our distro in "normal mode". IOW, we owned them, and those chromebooks would no longer trust Google's ChromeOS distro.
These last two projects are built with Go, and build in minutes, instead of the hours for ChromeOS. There is bitrot, but not much.
And, of course, you could also build an ubuntu distro, but chromebooks nowadays are light on memory and disk, which makes this hard. In 2012, I had a chromebook with 40G memory and 320G SSD, but good luck building one of them nowadays.
I spent 8 years showing people how to repurpose chromebooks, and even install your own keys and sign your own distro, which can be anything; it has always fallen on deaf ears. Maybe that can change.
But, the big thing: are chromebooks wired to chromeos, or google's version of chromeos? No. They are very general purpose, but people have not been listening!
Ron Minnich, rminnich@gmail.com
Apart from Chrome OS, Linux, Android and Google Sheets, nothing.
The latter seems to like copying and pasting all by itself. To prevent this I have bought a refurbished Dell Win 10 laptop and will be installing Lotus 1-2-3.
The Chromebook will used for my Arduino projects, for which it's quite good.
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