this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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133
Google extends Chromebook lifespan to ten years (www.zdnet.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Starting next year, Google will provide Chromebook security patches and software upgrades for up to a decade. This will effectively guarantee that no existing Chromebook will expire within the next two years.

However, a Google spokesperson added the caveat that, "In making changes to the expiration policy, we have to coordinate with each partner making any component in these devices. It requires a security and performance guarantee from the makers." Other Google sources indicated that the major Chromebook vendors are expected to work with the company to extend their hardware's lifespan.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

I wonder if it'd just be easier to open these up to Linux distros. Out of the 3 Chromebooks I have once they go out of support they are on a quick decline to just becoming trash because I can't do anything with them after that. At least traditional PC hardware I could just put Linux on it and have a device for years to come when the hardware actually fails.

Edit just to clarify none of my devices are supported by galliumos or as far as I know any other Linux distros

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Last time I looked into this gallium always was discontinued. I got endeavor os working on a Chromebook. The problem is you need to flash your own bootloader and you generally can't do that on arm Chromebooks you will generally want an Intel Chromebook to do this on and there aren't very many of those. The one I have also suffers from having very low storage, I think the onboard storage is like 16 GB.

To be completely honest I'm burnt out on Chromebooks as a viable platform. I made one work in college but I wouldn't really advise going down this path. I probably advise you to get a Pinetab with the keyboard cover or some other similar tablet for that niche, or find a small laptop of the more traditional sense to do this on.

Chromebooks are kind of all weird platform when you think about it, a disposable laptop that's designed just to be a web browser. Google obviously made it to trap people in their ecosystem and the only real markets where they've seen much usages in education, where the very limited Suite of tool students use often were web-based anyways and they're disposability means that if a student trashes them which is not to uncommon replacing them isn't that big of a deal.

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