Unless you can easily upgrade the RAM, Storage, and replace the OS when it loses support, it's still ewaste.
Yes, installing Linux is possible, but it isn't easy. I put GalliumOS on my old high school Chromebook.
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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It is worth noting that they updated their support to be 10 years moving forward, so I disagree with the eWaste sentiment. I agree that Linux as a permanent alternative isn't super easy, and I say that typing from a Chromebook running Debian 12.
You can upgrade the RAM and storage on some of them. Installing either Linux or windows is also possible.
Possible != easy. Putting Linux on any old Windows PC is dead easy, takes not even half an hour. Linux on a Chromebook? Easily hour+ long headache on your first time.
What makes it so difficult, even though they use similar hardware?
Easily hour+ long headache on your first time.
Whenever I read this kind of thing (and people seem to say it pretty often), it seems really weird to me. Same goes for complaining about distro installers. An hour of possible headache/irritation and then you use the machine for years. Obviously it would be better if stuff was easy, but an hour just seems insignificant in the scheme of things. I really just don't understand seeing it as an actual roadblock.
(Of course, there are other situations where it could matter like if you had to install/maintain 20 machines, but that's not what we're talking about here.)
Oh yeah, its absolutely not a huge deal if you already have a chromebook and just want to keep using it. But if I'm buying a new laptop and I know that putting another OS on it will be unnecessarily difficult, I'm just going to pick a different laptop.
Good point when you frame it that way, but also worth acknowledging that relative to the alternatives, it is an uphill battle that most won't be bothered with. My experience involved reading this site + joining their discord + digging into Github for troubleshooting, which is not a viable option for 80% of users
ChromeOS is Linux.
Well yes but actually no
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Apple laptops you can't upgrade any of those things and they sell like hotcakes. It's really not something most people do.
Chromebooks have their niche, beyond education they're good as second laptops where you're really only doing mostly browser stuff. Mine is getting on a bit now, a 2017 pixelbook.. but it doesn't go EOL until next year and I'll probably keep it beyond that because it just works.. only thing I'd like really would be a bigger screen.
Unless you can easily upgrade the RAM, Storage, and replace the OS when it loses support, it's still ewaste.
Which consumer desktop Linux distros have more than 10 years of updates?
All of them!
Linux and Linux distros are generally designed to be hardware-agnostic, and generally works just fine on very old components. I'm currently running the current version of Ubuntu on a used U1 server from ~2013, no issues, no headaches. It just works. Grab any Windows PC from the last 20 years, you won't have any compatibility issues running most Linux distros, though some distros might expect more performance. Linux Mint is fairly lightweight.
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Debian has been around for 30 years. And on my non-Chromebook I can always install the latest version.
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I just recently installed the latest version of Manjaro on a Dell XPS 15z from 2011. So Manjaro supports hardware from at least 12 years ago.
Nice. I believe I can put ChromeOS Flex (forgot about the name change from CloudReady in my other comments) on my old Surface Pro 3. Or Fedora. Or keep running Windows. And when my HP 14c stops getting updates from Google in 2030 or 2031, I'll consider Linux or Flex on it. 😁
Which consumer desktop Linux distros have more than 10 years of updates?
This is an apples to oranges (or OS to hardware) comparison.
Lots of GNU/Linux distros have been receiving updates for decades now, although major releases do sometimes drop support for some hardware (typically an entire CPU architecture).
I don't think ChromeOS is saying they'll provide security updates for a 10 year old OS release (though maybe they are? but that wouldn't be very attractive to most people), rather they're saying "ChromeOS devices receive 10 years of updates.**" (with the ** being "For devices prior to 2021 that will receive extended updates, some features and services might not be supported.")
And of course, yes, many other distros current releases today do have excellent support for hardware that is a lot more than 10 years old.
I'm running Arch Linux in a 18 year old laptop. And I could and have run Debian in the very same laptop in the past.
I don't get your point at all. If laptops were as repairable as desktops, we could continue using them for 15+ years. And software support, thanks to the GNU/Linux distro maintainers, is not a problem.
I have a CR48 from 2010 that is running arch linux, is slow but completely workable.
Brilliant! So you're affirming it wasn't automatically ewaste once Google stopped supporting it!
128GB eMMC storage
Man, I feel like there's no excuse for not having at least a 256/512gb SSD these days. They've gotten pretty cheap, and you got laptops like HP Pavilion having a 1tb SSD in their laptops for $450. Chromebooks are known for being super cheap, but this doesn't look like great value.
Google wants you to not store locally though, only in their servers at a cost once you pass the "free storage" amount.
Jesus Christ the comments here are super toxic. Literally any piece of news is gonna be complaining.
They're being toxic to Google. Do you really care about that?
Negative comments on tech devices that aren't up to par are warrented. I, for one, and glad that news of this new product is getting honest treatment.
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