*|FNAME|*1d ago

Today’s fuckery:

A few years back we bought my son a Chromebook for his schoolwork. At the time it seemed like a good choice because the price was right and the limited specs meant that it would pretty useless for much else. (Focus on your schoolwork, kid!)

The Chromebook ended up getting slightly bent in my son’s backpack, which screwed up the touchpad. Alas, old Chromey ended up forgotten in the ‘pile of old crap I refuse to get rid of’, until one day I decided to do some searching into repairing the touchpad, which I was able to accomplish by ‘shimming’ out to warped case a little bit.

Then Google decided to end support for Chromebooks.

Well, today I dusted the old girl off and began with the question: can one install Linux on this thing?

Turns out, the answer is ‘probably’.

Hell yeah, let’s dig in!

#RightToRepair #HardwareHacking #JailBreaking #Chromebook

Show threadHuman 3500

@crispius Google ended Chromebooks?

#RightToRepair #HardwareHacking #JailBreaking #Chromebook

Apr 6 at 6:52pmWeb
Show thread*|FNAME|*1d ago

@human3500
Ended support for older ones (>5 years).

https://www.pcworld.com/article/416173/why-my-older-chromebook-has-a-right-to-live-even-if-google-says-its-over.html

Why my older Chromebook has a right to live, even if Google says it's over

Chromebooks' five-year end-of-life policy—if it holds up—could put a lot of perfectly good laptops out of commission.

PCWorld
Show threadHuman 35001d ago
@crispius
Ah, yes. Thank you. That's the normal process. It's based on the chipset used and support is now for ten years from when the chipset was introduced. Ten years is crazy but i suppose that's the idea.
Show thread*|FNAME|*1d ago
@human3500
This one definitely isn’t 10 years old, but it only gives me the option of updating only if I want to lose access to the Play Store, so basically it’s done.
Show threadHuman 35001d ago
@crispius
The support window has been growing longer over time. I think it was only 3 or 5 years when they started.
Show threadG1d ago
@crispius @human3500 if you can get it to boot Linux you can install ChromeOS Flex which is basically a different team in Google supporting hardware that the main ChromeOS team doesn't \o/