UngodlyAudreyđłď¸ââ§ď¸Built-in software âdeath datesâ are sending thousands of schoolsâ Chromebooks to the recycling bin
cerement
Reviving Chromebooks with Ubuntu: Autonomous Servers, Planned Obsolescence, and Permacomputing
A tutorial and slight manifesto on reviving end-of-life Chromebooks. How to make them into autonomous servers, and why we need to rethink computing in the age of climate collapse.
astraeusI love this, the idea that the hardware is done once the software gives out is asinine. Itâs also what companies have been selling us on for decades now. Itâs long past time to rethink the idea of what hardware lifespan really looks like
Thatâs what they should be doing, but it isnât what theyâre going to do, unfortunately.
Kimathi Bradford, a 16-year-old Oakland tech repair intern, has looked into whether there was a way to replace the outdated Chromebook software with a non-Google brand, but it ended up being a lot of work, Kimathi said, and the open-source replacement wasnât up to par. âItâs like the Fritos of software,â he said. âNo one really wants to use it.â
Now, Iâm not sure if what they tried was Linux, but I wouldnât be too surprised. The younger generations grew up with smartphones; I feel as though operating systems will become more streamlined and opaque as time goes on. I suspect weâll have to contend with the phonification of mainstream computing in the coming years.
PeachManItâs not a sensible path for a school with budget constraints (which is most schools). They would need to come up with a new MDM solution because they canât manage their computers with Google anymore. So their IT costs would increase dramatically, probably more money than they would save by keeping the old hardware alive. The simplest path forward is to just buy new Chromebooks.
fogetaboutitI havenât (will never) had the experience of owning chromebook as a student, what does the MDM will do here? Cheating prevention?
Mobile Device Management, aka the administering of software to a fleet of devices.
It grants the IT department authority over the devices. Restricting unauthorized changes like adding new accounts, adding new software, removing existing software, allows for tracking of the devices and sometimes remote wiping in case the device is stolen or lost and valuable data is on the device, among other things.
Less to do with cheating and more to do with control over the device since itâs the schoolâs property. Preventing cheating is an afterthought of MDM (mobile device management).
I wonder what it would look like without these measures?
Back in My Dayâ˘, we had minimal MDM on the school computers.
Yes, the kids that wanted to fuck around (look at porn, download music, play games) fucked around, but they would have the old-fashioned way, anyway. The most common thing was just changing the desktop photo to a Lamborghini, or something. Anyway, we turned outâŚ. Well⌠not necessarily ok, but I donât fault the computers for lack thereof where applicable.
Admittedly, these werenât personal laptops but just ones in the library or computer labs, but still.
Same thing it does for any instution that loans out hardware, e.g. employers:
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monitoring
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remote lockdown / wipe
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remote management of installed software
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etc.
Sorry but Fritos of software is dumb & in no way representative of bringing old chromebooks back to life beyond their support date.
Schools often buy the bottom baseline of everything & in now way was a 4gb of ram a good, decent or proper experience to begin w/ & their replacements probably also had 4gb of ram - just a faster cpu, gpu & ram to hide that itâs lacking ram still.
I think schools could easily band together & make their own education focused Linux distro & then just focus on hardware thatâs compatible w/ thatâs Chromebooks or Windows laptops. Hard part would be building out an on par MDM &/or ldap server if not using a Windows server.
All Chromebook are is a browser basically. It already is the bag of Fritos imho. I think the hard part though would be to hire an IT guy that knows Linux better than the students tbh. Schools already under pay teachers in the US & that goes 2-3x for IT staff.
theneverfoxI mean, underpaid IT aside, do they need to be better than the students?
We like to organize school like thereâs rules, you follow them, and if you do better it must be because you are better.
But thats not how the world works, and itâs not how technology works - itâs all about understanding the system and looking for loopholes
Is it better to enforce absolute control though? It teaches you nothing but how to be a good cog in the machine.
Teaching you that the rules arenât absolute, but requires skill and legwork gives you a mindset to actually succeed in our warped little resource allocation game. Instead you should teach them to consider the effects - if they crash the network, make school suck for everyone for a few days.
But as to your original point, you still need an admin who can at least manage the network, and they should be given the funds to pay for that
As a lover of Frito pie, I take offense to this
I take offense to the idea that there is something called Frito pie, and worse, that your comment leads us to believe, hopefully errantly, that somebody has concocted such an abomination.
Why would you subject yourself to eating something thatâs famous for smelling like the bacteria that festers between dogsâ toes: be.chewy.com/is-this-normal-why-do-my-dogs-feet-sâŚ
roadkill"being a lot of work" = I couldn't follow a guide.
Honestly, Chromebooks are among some of the easiest systems to boot a Linux distro on. Far easier than, say, Bootcamp.
- Exceptions apply to enterprise or education enrolled systems as they lock those devices down. Corporations and schools, however, do have the option to release the hardware and allow modifications to the system.
ScrubblesRight, but then multiply that guide x1000 systems, losing google enterprise, switching over to a unix directory system, setting up infrastructure, network shares, printers, and everything and itâs not just a guide - itâs a team of people working for weeks to get it set up. Of course to us itâs easy, itâd just be a computer or two. To an entire company/school it may be over a million dollars to swap over
Youâre saying itâs over a million dollars to revive some chromebooks? Or to build out a system that is independent from planned obsolescence? For a school district that has to operate in the long term, I think one of those is a bargain.
Also, the cost of maintaining 2 vs 1000 systems obviously scales up, but itâs obviously not nearly linear. The difference in cost between managing 1000 and 2000 systems would be negligible.
orcaThe plan on a large scale with a team sounds good, but IT at schools is a total mixed bag due to budget, etc. Iâve seen some schools where IT is just burnt out and underpaid (canât tell which came first) and sometimes the IT team will be an old head that still reminisces about Windows NT.
It would be cool if there was an independent team that resurrected those laptops for schools. I think the problem that arises though is security.
Right, for a huge enterprise they would probably honestly consider it, but a school with ~1000 students? Less? Itâs going to be cheaper to trash those and get new ones. Donât get me wrong I think itâs a terrible waste and Google is horrible for putting them in this situation, and Iâd love for the open source community to offer some scripts for wiping, installing ubuntu, setting up ACLs, connecting to a domain, connecting shares, etc, but still most schools are going to see this and just say âOkay google how much money do you need for us to keep working?â
TedvdBAgree. Iâve got a chromebook running Linux, for that I had to open it up and remove a screw. It takes around 15 minutes if youâve done it before, so for bulk migration to Linux itâs not feasible.
You had to remove a screw to install Linux? Is that like a physical tampering prevention measure? Makes me think of how I had to swap a jumper to install a GPU in an old HP tower that had integrated video.
Yes itâs exactly that, check out this documentation.
What kind of monster doesn't like Fritos?
Iâve heard of CS majors coming in these days not knowing what a filesystem is.
đŚ OneRedFox đŚ
CalcProgrammer1A decade or more of kids growing up with shitty toy computers instead of real computers will do that. Mobile OSes, in their ridiculous pursuit to dumb down the computing experience, have dumbed down the computer users.
There seems to be a sweet spot in age where you grew up with actual computer experience. Young enough to actually grow up with computers in your household and school but old enough for those computers to not be toy mobile crap.
Iâm very glad mobile Linux phones exist now. Having a real computer in my pocket rather than some awful imitation of what a computer should be is refreshing. I always wanted a pocket computer as a kid, but then when it actually happened it felt nothing like a computer unless you hacked it.
The first PC my family had, and thus first computer I had extensive experience with, was a Dell Pentium 4 running XP. Yeah, obviously I used a file system implicitly, but I remember thinking later when I entered college and the workforce that I was deprived of learning how to use a ârealâ computer because I didnât get to experience the consumer PCs of the 80s. I didnât have experience with a C64, I didnât need to learn BASIC or a command line just to use the computer. As a user, understanding how reads and writes to disk happened, and how to make the best use of my working memory wasnât necessary, the OS handled it all. I just needed to know to click âejectâ first. And yet Iâm doing fine (I think :D).
My point is, every generation will be able to say âI grew up with a dumbed down computing experienceâ. But Iâm more optimistic about this I think. I welcome a generation of computer scientists who think completely differently about how files should be organized. Itâs not important that I know BASIC, and maybe itâs not important that todayâs students think in terms of file systems. Theyâre still smart people, theyâll still need to learn trees and graphs to solve problems. They just wonât be pre-programmed with assumptions and requirements that may not exist anymore or in future hardware.
2023 python programmers not understanding why you need to use the context manager when you open files âwhats a file socket?â âwhy do exceptions mess everything upâ âexit worse than c++ destructorsâ
so they think that reformatting is wiping the drive clean instead of recreating ntfs/exfat metadata files
AdmetusWell, given that android would be Unix based he was probably talking about a Linux distro being a lot of work, which it can be if applied to individual computers, instead of a network.
[moved] stereo griever@UngodlyAudrey @cerement there's chrultrabook project focused on allowing to install Windows or Linux https://chrultrabook.github.io/docs/
StorksforlegsYes!! Chromebooks have so much potential.
I have a cheapo 2016 acer Chromebook still going strong with Gallium OS. (An ubuntu based distro geared at low spec chromebooks.)
same article mentions Chromebooks are a great alternative to Raspberry Pis â cheaper and come with a built in keyboard and screen for monitoring all your automation needs âŚ
I, on the other hand, have a Lenovo Duet 2 which sort of sucked the day I bought it and has hardly gotten any better. I wanted a new Android tablet for taking notes and reading comics and there was just nothing else decent available a year ago. Specifically got an ARM one so it would reliably run Android apps. Which it doesn't -- it's so unstable. Have to reboot it regularly when stuff stops working. The promise of Android apps on ChromeOS was more of a hope than a pledge.
Good thing it was cheap because this thing has practically no future for me. I regret everything about it.
Like with anything else, you get what you pay for. Buy a Samsung tablet next time.
My Acer C710 still going strong, repurposed as a 3D Printer host. Also with Gallium OS. I just can't seem to kill it.
BaroqueInMindAnyone know where I can buy or place bids on batches/pallets/etc of them? I want to self host a bunch of shit using those cheap computers that are being thrown out.
Same here!
Sourcing Chromebooks from the Reviving Chromebooks with Ubuntu I posted elsewhere
easiest looks like just calling the IT department of your local school
Reviving Chromebooks with Ubuntu: Autonomous Servers, Planned Obsolescence, and Permacomputing
A tutorial and slight manifesto on reviving end-of-life Chromebooks. How to make them into autonomous servers, and why we need to rethink computing in the age of climate collapse.
pinkpatrolInteresting article, I donât think I have a use for them though.
âThese updates depend on many device-specific non-Google hardware and software providers that work with Google to provide the highest level of security and stability support,â said Peter Du, communications manager for ChromeOS. âFor this reason, older Chrome devices cannot receive updates indefinitely to enable new OS and browser features.â
Bull. Shit.
hoodatninjaI have an 8 year old iPad that can still use Amazon video and they canât support these computers for more than 2-3 years. Iâm not an Apple fanboy but that is absolutely ridiculous.
I have a Mac Mini that has to be dumped because Apple is no longer providing OS updates to it. Just because you can continue to use it doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so. iOS and OSX are being increasingly targeted especially as the inertia against upgrading systems that work just fine is highest among the technologically illiterate.
has to be dumped
OpenCore Legacy Patcher, Linux, ChromeOS Flex, and maybe even Windows 10 could all be options for that Mac. As-is ot would still be perfectly safe to use offline too.
What year is the mini from? I run a Plex server off a 2011 Mac mini.
Apple devices are serviceable for far longer after the OS stops updating than windows/android devices in my experience. But regardless, Apple doesnât discontinue support as early as 3 or 4 years. Even you have to admit that is ridiculous of google.
I will give credit to Apple on that one because android phone manufacturers are now supporting their phone for longer because of how long Apple is supporting them.
I think the more probable reason is that EU regulators were unhappy with this for a long time and have now put 3 years of OS updates and 5 years of security updates into law. Low cost Android manufacturers donât care what Apple does.
skulblakaI remember back in the day when I had apple devices where they would push updates for devices long past their capability to actually run the updated software. Rather than refuse the update or get a pruned patch with security fixes only, it would force updates and bloat your phone and grind it into unresponsive unusability after a few years.
I hear that's not so much the case anymore, so that's nice. But I remember. The main reason I upgraded my phone was because of that, the hardware was great, but I could hardly use the software anymore even after clean installs.
My point being, I guess, extended support is great if managed properly but it can also become a bludgeon with which to drive you toward the new generations of devices.
long past their capability to actually run the updated software
Well, Apple intentionally slowed those devices down to make the users update, instead of using an insecure device, that wouldâve provided a good experience otherwise.
And these days are retiring devices arbitrarily for profits too. For example this year they are retiring the Iphone 8, which has better hardware, than the ipad 2018 that is not retiringâŚ
That slowness was, at least officially, for the battery health. Do you have the support to prove otherwise?
supercheesecakeThese conversations bring the weirdest people out of the woodwork. I remember talking with a guy who explained to me how crap Apple laptops were because you (according to him) canât customise them. Turns out heâd never owned or even used an Apple laptop. I was like, why do you care?! Especially about something you have no experience with!
The problem is that those people often can't read. Everyone has a biased opinion or two they forgot to back up with support, but those people can't be argued with. I want to know how to talk with them.
Actually yes. I bought a brand new -discounted old stock- Iphone 4s for my mum near the end of the ios 8 cycle. The day before we installed ios 9 on it, it had okay performance and good battery life. Following the update to ios9 the performance went to complete shit. (the battery remained usable for 2 more years after, but it was not a good experience for her)
How does that prove that it was not for your battery health?
And then if I recall correctly (though I canât be bothered to look) didnât they get sued for slowing phones?
So people were mad that their phones battery wasnât holding a charge anymore, âim being forced to upgradeâ, so Apple throttled older phones to keep the battery running, aka allowing people to keep their phones longer, and then they got sued for slowing down phones lol.
I am an apple fan boy, I wont hide that. But it does seem like they tried to do a âgoodâ and make peoples phones last longer, and then got sued.
Also the whole forced upgrade just isnât apples game IMO. Do they want you buying the new one every year, of course. But the more important thing is that you keep using AN iPhone at all. Stay in the ecosystem, stay in the app store, stay paying for icloud, etc.
Going to a new phone gives the user a window to move away from IOS. (Though most wonât haha)
Back for their laptops the support has dropped to the lowest in years. Some intel MacBooks no longer get the latest version after 6 years.
Confused noise from people who grew up using Windows 95.
You're also not a giant customer who needs security and it services like a school district. 3 years might be early, idk, but in plenty of enterprise or institutes replace their hardware every so often.
SamiMy 2012 laptop runs windows 10 perfectly fine and has the security updates. Weâre way past the point of using hardware limitations as an excuse for companies to drop support early.
I donât see why a school should have to replace their basic computers with an equally basic computer after 3 years unless itâs broken beyond repair. I donât think the OS itself is doing much more than what an enterprise copy of windows does for security.
JackbyDevThe only reason Windows 11 canât run on super old hardware is because of the misleading decision to require secure boot (a feature of the motherboard that stops unsigned OSes from booting). The metaphor I use is that it is like a car radio manufacturer refusing to let a car radio work in cars that donât have car alarms then calling the radio secure because of it.