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This makes me so upset. I love honestly love a lot of Chromebook hardware. It's honestly exactly what I want in a laptop - long battery life, efficient, lightw

This makes me so upset. I love honestly love a lot of Chromebook hardware. It's honestly exactly what I want in a laptop - long battery life, efficient, lightweight, decent enough keyboard. But it's impossible to get without giving Google money, and without dealing with a massive warning every time you boot - if you're model even lets you install something other than Chrome OS. I should really grab a Pinebook Pro I guess. And that's without getting into all the privacy issues of students being forced to use Google software/hardware, or the schools spying on students through the Chromebooks.

mattl 5y ago
Yeah it’s bleak but true. Somehow I got downvoted for it.
my123 5y ago
> But it's impossible to get without giving Google money, and without dealing with a massive warning every time you boot - if you're model even lets you install something other than Chrome OS. That's not even the most painful part. Full data wipe when switching between security modes is outright user-hostile, and would be widely considered as unacceptable if Microsoft or Apple did that on their general-purpose computing platforms.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > Full data wipe when switching between security modes is outright user-hostile, I don't think it's user hostile to prevent all security models from being dragged to the lowest common denominator. If they didn't do that, an attacker could just switch to a more insecure mode and go after your data.
  - my123 5y ago
    > being dragged to the lowest common denominator It's rather the reverse. How macOS handles it is by asking for user credentials on a security policy downgrade, and enforcing that by the Secure Enclave. (and if you have user creds, you _have access to user data anyway_) On other platforms, that tying... just doesn't exist.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      On modern Android you also need user credentials for OEM unlock; the user needs to enable the developer options menu and allow unlock from there, otherwise the fastboot step won't succeed. (Notably, this preserves the effectiveness of FRP; even "wiping" the hardware and restoring the stock OS install won't allow unlock unless the existing user is verified). But a successful unlock still wipes all data, same as in previous Android versions where the user-side step was not needed.
zozbot234 5y ago
> But it's impossible to get without giving Google money, and without dealing with a massive warning every time you boot You can get rid of the warning by physically removing a write-protect screw and replacing the firmware. It's still a very user-hostile feature because it's not just a 'warning' either, but actively prompts you to wipe your existing installation. That sort of thing is very much what you'd expect in a toy, not a machine for serious use.
- floatboth 5y ago
  The screws are long gone, to unlock you prove ownership by sitting for a few minutes pressing the power button when told. Wiping the installation is very much expected. The security model includes protecting data, of course data has to be wiped when removing security. Data on disk is encrypted with a key stored in the security chip, which destroys the key when security settings are changed. Android does the same for fastboot unlock. What's the big deal? If you want to flash UEFI and use a custom OS, why would you want to preserve the ChromeOS partition?
opan 5y ago
>I should really grab a Pinebook Pro I guess. Yes, however now is a bad time. They are out of stock and struggling to source parts last I checked. I think screens are the main issue.
emptysongglass 5y ago
The PineBook Pro was never fully supported by Linux despite shipping with Linux. I had one and sold it because of this. Suspend is still broken in mainline, for example. Direct NVMe booting is buggy. Hardware accelerated video is still in a weird state. Tons of tiny little things like this plague the device with many distros shipping their own fixes that never get upstreamed. Check out this FAQ that's scoped around a custom Arch Linux ARM but gives you an idea of the pain: https://github.com/SvenKiljan/archlinuxarm-pbp/blob/main/FAQ.md https://github.com/SvenKiljan/archlinuxarm-pbp/blob/main/FAQ... For thoughts on why Pine64 seems to be stuck in this state of never fully working hardware I can recommend Drew DeVault's blogpost: https://drewdevault.com/2022/01/18/Pine64s-weird-priorities.html https://drewdevault.com/2022/01/18/Pine64s-weird-priorities....
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > The PineBook Pro was never fully supported by Linux despite shipping with Linux. The postmarketOS folks have significant experience with mainlining kernel support for hardware that's only supported in downstream/vendor kernels. Please reach out to them and make sure they know about the issues; this work should be plenty relevant to them because Pine64 is also doing mobile HW.

mattl 5y ago

Yeah it’s bleak but true. Somehow I got downvoted for it.

my123 5y ago

> But it's impossible to get without giving Google money, and without dealing with a massive warning every time you boot - if you're model even lets you install something other than Chrome OS. That's not even the most painful part. Full data wipe when switching between security modes is outright user-hostile, and would be widely considered as unacceptable if Microsoft or Apple did that on their general-purpose computing platforms.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> Full data wipe when switching between security modes is outright user-hostile, I don't think it's user hostile to prevent all security models from being dragged to the lowest common denominator. If they didn't do that, an attacker could just switch to a more insecure mode and go after your data.
- my123 5y ago
  > being dragged to the lowest common denominator It's rather the reverse. How macOS handles it is by asking for user credentials on a security policy downgrade, and enforcing that by the Secure Enclave. (and if you have user creds, you _have access to user data anyway_) On other platforms, that tying... just doesn't exist.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    On modern Android you also need user credentials for OEM unlock; the user needs to enable the developer options menu and allow unlock from there, otherwise the fastboot step won't succeed. (Notably, this preserves the effectiveness of FRP; even "wiping" the hardware and restoring the stock OS install won't allow unlock unless the existing user is verified). But a successful unlock still wipes all data, same as in previous Android versions where the user-side step was not needed.

zozbot234 5y ago

> But it's impossible to get without giving Google money, and without dealing with a massive warning every time you boot You can get rid of the warning by physically removing a write-protect screw and replacing the firmware. It's still a very user-hostile feature because it's not just a 'warning' either, but actively prompts you to wipe your existing installation. That sort of thing is very much what you'd expect in a toy, not a machine for serious use.

floatboth 5y ago
The screws are long gone, to unlock you prove ownership by sitting for a few minutes pressing the power button when told. Wiping the installation is very much expected. The security model includes protecting data, of course data has to be wiped when removing security. Data on disk is encrypted with a key stored in the security chip, which destroys the key when security settings are changed. Android does the same for fastboot unlock. What's the big deal? If you want to flash UEFI and use a custom OS, why would you want to preserve the ChromeOS partition?

opan 5y ago

>I should really grab a Pinebook Pro I guess. Yes, however now is a bad time. They are out of stock and struggling to source parts last I checked. I think screens are the main issue.

emptysongglass 5y ago

The PineBook Pro was never fully supported by Linux despite shipping with Linux. I had one and sold it because of this. Suspend is still broken in mainline, for example. Direct NVMe booting is buggy. Hardware accelerated video is still in a weird state. Tons of tiny little things like this plague the device with many distros shipping their own fixes that never get upstreamed. Check out this FAQ that's scoped around a custom Arch Linux ARM but gives you an idea of the pain: https://github.com/SvenKiljan/archlinuxarm-pbp/blob/main/FAQ.md https://github.com/SvenKiljan/archlinuxarm-pbp/blob/main/FAQ... For thoughts on why Pine64 seems to be stuck in this state of never fully working hardware I can recommend Drew DeVault's blogpost: https://drewdevault.com/2022/01/18/Pine64s-weird-priorities.html https://drewdevault.com/2022/01/18/Pine64s-weird-priorities....

zozbot234 5y ago
> The PineBook Pro was never fully supported by Linux despite shipping with Linux. The postmarketOS folks have significant experience with mainlining kernel support for hardware that's only supported in downstream/vendor kernels. Please reach out to them and make sure they know about the issues; this work should be plenty relevant to them because Pine64 is also doing mobile HW.