I don’t expect quality from them, that’s why I don’t really pay attention to corporate journalism. I get most of this kind of information from individual creators, and I do support those when I can
Good for you, and I’m impressed by your undefensive and unhuffy reply.
Because the amount of entitlement I see about professional journalism really pisses me off, personally. There is a reason that much (not all) journalism is not the quality it used to be. It’s because nobody is frigging paying for it any more. Journalists are not the perpetrators in this story, they are the victims. The internet has caused their profession to implode. It’s their jobs that have disappeared on a huge scale, their salaries that have shrunk, their career choice that turned out to be a catastrophic bad move. All because of a technical innovation, basically. Well, personally I think we may come to regret the demise of this profession which served society well for at least a century. But the least we can do is stop the victim-blaming.
Rant over. No, I am not a journalist. Very glad of that career choice.
There are actually Chromebooks with very solid specs, but no, it isn’t that simple. They have custom firmware and components that often don’t play well with Linux, or Windows for that matter.
Okay, thanks for clearing this up. Chromebooks have turned me off since their inception, I just assumed since they are made by regular laptop companies that they are plain old low-spec machines running a lightweight OS with minimal functionality.
Not really. A Chromebook to a laptop is basically what a gaming console is to a desktop pc. Yes, it shares a lot of hardware, and the ISA too these days, but even then a lot of it might be trimmed down without any notice, or on the software side, you might be locked into what you get. They did make it easier to install Linux flavors, bit you still get what you get
The issue is that Google locks down the bootloader. Nothing prevents the compute and display hardware from running a traditional Linux distribution, but that “trusted” bootloader does.
Not even remotely. It requires custom firmware which often requires physical disassembly to install. From there you can install any distro, but you will continue to have many small issues and inconveniences often due to the nonstandard keyboard.
There was a Chromebook targeted Linux distro called eupnea that could be installed without custom firmware via depthboot, but it’s dead now and the original repo got deleted after the Dev got hacked, so the build scripts don’t work anymore.
You can install vanilla Linux, but huge headaches are involved.
I did it, and it worked, but I had to open is and remove a foil (equivalent to a jumper), go to developer mode, then flash a new bootloader by running a script from GitHub.
Think flashing a ROM on a pretty locked down Android device.
The upside is that when the process is done, you have a regular PC and no need to do any cumbersome process again.
I would definitely get a Chromebook, but only once you can change the default browser from Chrome without needing to do any weird workarounds like Android apps
As someone who has owned a Chromebook for several years, I can tell you that you shouldn’t. Hardware wise it’s hard to beat Chromebooks at their price points, but the complete lack of control over the system is a deal breaker. I don’t have time to list all of the issues I’ve had. In many cases what would have been trivial fixes on a normal Linux system required full reinstalls on chromeOS. Like the time I accidentally filled up the fairly modest system storage. The system refused to allow me to delete anything, requiring a reset just to get local file management abilities back.
I ultimately ended up installing full Linux on it, which ended up being a whole other ordeal due to all of Google’s “security” features.
There are 2 ways to do it, either via depthboot(software only, no custom firmware, lots of manual OS prep, 0 risk) or custom firmware(maybe physical, model dependant, no os prep, small risk). For custom firmware you usually have to either bridge an internal jumper, unplug the battery, or build a custom cable, depending on your model.
While it is allowed it’s not supported by google.
I would never recommend buying a Chromebook with the intention of replacing the OS unless you’re looking for a project or you’re getting it for cheap.
I had a tiny Dell Chromebook 11 through college running arch. It had a 10/10 keyboard and a decent IPS display, paired with an efficient bitmap font it was perfect for my needs. I should grab one off eBay, it looks like they’re only $40 or so now.
That is cheap, but if you go to Google’s own page about Chromebooks, the options you see there are all in regular laptop pricing territory. Does anyone actually buy Pixelbooks or gaming Chromebooks?
yes but no. the pixelbook was by far and away the nicest build quality of any laptop I’ve owned, and the Linux containers has basically made it a normal laptop other than requiring chrome. with that said, I bought it second hand for ~$200 would never have even considered it for its original $1000 or whatever it listed at.
ChromeOS is also the most secure desktop focused os you can get so I usually use it for banking and stuff like that.
My girlfriend bought a really cheap one from Lenovo. Besides watching movies and browsing the web there’s not much you can do because ChromeOS is extremely limiting. Wouldn’t ever recommend anyone to buy anything with ChromeOS on it.
They’d probably love a Linux system not by Google just as much.
You could try Mint, it’s pretty friendly in my experience, the GUI installer (with the full apt and flathub repos) helps, and Mint can support auto updates which will help the non-tech savvy a lot!
“The button on the computer that also turns it on”
Also, this is exactly why the OS should auto update for people like them, rather than them having to use the updater and fill in their password and whatnot
I love my chromebook, 90% of the time when I’m lazing around nothing I need uses more than a browser, although it also runs a debian variant and can run android apps, which is useful occasionally. It’s light, doesn’t get remotely hot, has no fan noise and the battery lasts ages.
My mother has one because she doesn’t need the complexity of windows breaking everything… she only needs gmail and facebook.
I mean, it was for on campus use, but I bought one in college to have a cheap note taker and basic homework machine for on campus that wouldn’t set me back too far if it got stolen or broken. I had a gaming desktop at home and was in a non-technical major, so it worked out great.
Some adobe products are way ahead of the competition (patenting useful stuff) and they integrate nicely with each other. I don’t use them out of principle but that’s why people use them.
In my desktop at home the main OS is Ubuntu, basically since more than 15 years, but I own also 2 Chromebooks laptops. I have a Lenovo Duet which i use mainly because I can run both Android and Linux apps, and it allow me to watch streaming services in offline. I would prefer to use any “gnu-linux” distro on a portable device, but if you wish to watch Amazon Prime or Netflix offline, you can only use a tablet with Android or iOs but on linux pc you are limited on web app typically, except in Chromebook which has some extra flexibility. Also I don’t find invasive so far, more or less we have the same privacy settings as in Android. As benefit it’s supported for 10 years for OS updates. And, in the future I may also decide to install a pure linux distro if I need.
I have used years ago different download platforms, years before Torrent, in the time of Napster, Emule etc. but so far the official streaming service provide a good offer, without wasting time. I don’t think it worst the effort to download illegally ie comparing with price of Prime. I see now a tendency when the platform cost will increase and users should, in theory have 10 platforms, where i may understand the reason for people returning to illegal download. The streaming service companies should think carefully before increasing the price or creating new rules to share the cost.
Some Chromebooks are pretty hackable. I’ve got an older one that I reflashed with tianocore UEFI firmware. It makes for a pretty decent cheap and lightweight low power laptop. You can run basically any standard ARM Linux distro on it.
windows sandbox is… getting there, macos is decent but iirc the app dev can choose to not use it. all Linux options require user intervention to ensure it’s set up properly. ChromeOS’ sandboxing technique is inherited from Android and is the strongest/strictest of any desktop operating system.
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