4 ms·

It would be a very big win for goodwill if Google built out a team that took over as much of this as possible. Just have a bunch of this hardware and try to kee

by rtpg 3y ago

It would be a very big win for goodwill if Google built out a team that took over as much of this as possible. Just have a bunch of this hardware and try to keep these machines up to date. The biggest problem from the outside feels like people working at Google might not be super hype about this (no I'm not talking about the "new project to get promoted" treadmill, just vibes), and really there's probably external people who are up to this. But seriously, just figuring out how to get these to run "forever" in whatever degraded capacity is possible. At least until the hardware itself starts falling apart of course.

squarefoot 3y ago
No degraded capacity at all; you can unlock a lot of them and install a real OS which won't limit what you can do with them. That will be a big upgrade. I've reflashed a good number of Chromeboxes (hardware-wise they're essentially the same thing) and they now can run whatever I wish to install. More info here. https://mrchromebox.tech/ https://mrchromebox.tech/
- clipsy 3y ago
  Cool, now do all the software the school relies on just as easily
  - rtpg 3y ago
    tbqh, since these are all chromebooks, "Does this run Chrome" covers a hell of a lot of ground. The device management stuff is probably the big kicker, since I imagine schools can manage these machines quite easily through some Google management console. Maybe if Google added support for machines running some Ubuntu LTS or otherwise....
  - ke88y 3y ago
    IME for chromebooks there's not a lot of student software that doesn't have a web app version.
  - II2II 3y ago
    In the days of standalone applications, this was quite common. Upgrade the OS, and the software would still run. Upgrade the computer, and the software may still run. (Progress was so rapid back then that 10 years of progress in hardware would cause issues with poorly coded memory checks and timers). In the days of standalone computers, you didn't bother with upgrades at all. Developers would create new software for popular platforms a decade after their prime (think Apple II or 8088 based PCs) even though the rate of progress in hardware was beyond astonishing. Rather than maintaing what they had, schools could build upon it. Of course, network security and applications means that it is a struggle to maintain what you have on a budget. Artificially obsoleting hardware only make matters worse.
- rtpg 3y ago
  I am happy there is info on how to "liberate" these devices. The school's usecases are much more around having a locked down environment so that kids' systems can be recovered easily, and I don't know if just installing Ubuntu helps a lot with that use case. Given enterprise environments exist though, I do feel like there must be _some_ sort of setup that could be done to get a fairly robust environment. Especially if the kid's accounts are locked down enough. Bit of an OS distro problem, but the market might be there given what we're seeing here!
  - toast0 3y ago
    Once you have a decent UEFI boot environment, I think you can install Chrome OS Flex. At that point, it's basically the same as Chrome OS, except you're missing out on boot security, which is maybe not enough for some environments, but should be good enough for many. I haven't done this yet, though. I've got an old chromebook that kind of half works (touchpad is dead) and I put FreeBSD on when I stopped using it for Chrome OS; a Chromebox that I bought to put Windows on (and now runs FreeBSD) and my current ChromeOS device just ran out of updates but is still in good shape (it's one of the ones in the list in the article); the write protect screw seems hard to get to, so I'm going to wait for the last build to be 6 months old or a scary vulnerability to come out before I take it apart. [1] https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/ https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/
  - WWLink 3y ago
    > I am happy there is info on how to "liberate" these devices. The school's usecases are much more around having a locked down environment so that kids' systems can be recovered easily, and I don't know if just installing Ubuntu helps a lot with that use case. I know it's not practical, but man that sounds like a hell of a cop out. But that's where we are. I feel like with school computers the focus shouldn't be on locking them down but making them easy to restore if they get screwed up. And the students who do screw their computer up should be walked through fixing it. Actually they all should be walked through fixing it. That should be day 1 when the laptops are handed out with no OS on them.
    - sdenton4 3y ago
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  Cool. Now how do we deploy that to 100+ Chromebooks without spending more on labor than buying new Chromebooks?
  - squarefoot 3y ago
    Unlocking and reflashing them could be one of the first assignments in tech classes.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Linux supports all these machines. It'd take so little for ChromeOS to keep support up. It'll be one for the history books if Google just elects to let this situation degrade. They could show up at any time & do very little & restore public trust, make the company look good. But it sure looks like, once again, Google will just let everything go up in flames & fire. They'll make all computing look abominable, simply because the typical corporate bureaucracy doesn't even comprehend it's own hand smacking itself in the face.

by rtpg 3y ago

squarefoot 3y ago

No degraded capacity at all; you can unlock a lot of them and install a real OS which won't limit what you can do with them. That will be a big upgrade. I've reflashed a good number of Chromeboxes (hardware-wise they're essentially the same thing) and they now can run whatever I wish to install. More info here. https://mrchromebox.tech/ https://mrchromebox.tech/

clipsy 3y ago
Cool, now do all the software the school relies on just as easily
- rtpg 3y ago
  tbqh, since these are all chromebooks, "Does this run Chrome" covers a hell of a lot of ground. The device management stuff is probably the big kicker, since I imagine schools can manage these machines quite easily through some Google management console. Maybe if Google added support for machines running some Ubuntu LTS or otherwise....
- ke88y 3y ago
  IME for chromebooks there's not a lot of student software that doesn't have a web app version.
- II2II 3y ago
  In the days of standalone applications, this was quite common. Upgrade the OS, and the software would still run. Upgrade the computer, and the software may still run. (Progress was so rapid back then that 10 years of progress in hardware would cause issues with poorly coded memory checks and timers). In the days of standalone computers, you didn't bother with upgrades at all. Developers would create new software for popular platforms a decade after their prime (think Apple II or 8088 based PCs) even though the rate of progress in hardware was beyond astonishing. Rather than maintaing what they had, schools could build upon it. Of course, network security and applications means that it is a struggle to maintain what you have on a budget. Artificially obsoleting hardware only make matters worse.
rtpg 3y ago
I am happy there is info on how to "liberate" these devices. The school's usecases are much more around having a locked down environment so that kids' systems can be recovered easily, and I don't know if just installing Ubuntu helps a lot with that use case. Given enterprise environments exist though, I do feel like there must be _some_ sort of setup that could be done to get a fairly robust environment. Especially if the kid's accounts are locked down enough. Bit of an OS distro problem, but the market might be there given what we're seeing here!
- toast0 3y ago
  Once you have a decent UEFI boot environment, I think you can install Chrome OS Flex. At that point, it's basically the same as Chrome OS, except you're missing out on boot security, which is maybe not enough for some environments, but should be good enough for many. I haven't done this yet, though. I've got an old chromebook that kind of half works (touchpad is dead) and I put FreeBSD on when I stopped using it for Chrome OS; a Chromebox that I bought to put Windows on (and now runs FreeBSD) and my current ChromeOS device just ran out of updates but is still in good shape (it's one of the ones in the list in the article); the write protect screw seems hard to get to, so I'm going to wait for the last build to be 6 months old or a scary vulnerability to come out before I take it apart. [1] https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/ https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/
- WWLink 3y ago
  > I am happy there is info on how to "liberate" these devices. The school's usecases are much more around having a locked down environment so that kids' systems can be recovered easily, and I don't know if just installing Ubuntu helps a lot with that use case. I know it's not practical, but man that sounds like a hell of a cop out. But that's where we are. I feel like with school computers the focus shouldn't be on locking them down but making them easy to restore if they get screwed up. And the students who do screw their computer up should be walked through fixing it. Actually they all should be walked through fixing it. That should be day 1 when the laptops are handed out with no OS on them.
  - sdenton4 3y ago
kayodelycaon 3y ago
Cool. Now how do we deploy that to 100+ Chromebooks without spending more on labor than buying new Chromebooks?
- squarefoot 3y ago
  Unlocking and reflashing them could be one of the first assignments in tech classes.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

Linux supports all these machines. It'd take so little for ChromeOS to keep support up. It'll be one for the history books if Google just elects to let this situation degrade. They could show up at any time & do very little & restore public trust, make the company look good. But it sure looks like, once again, Google will just let everything go up in flames & fire. They'll make all computing look abominable, simply because the typical corporate bureaucracy doesn't even comprehend it's own hand smacking itself in the face.