I really dislike the “expiration” date, and at one point they were very short (5 years) and poorly documented so it was a nasty surprise if you got an older model on sale.

I recently helped liberate 70 Chromebooks that were going to recycling. Now students get a Linux laptop for free.

I'm absolutely sure there are people who do. Chromebooks just have a practically nonexistant market share compared to Windows, and a lot of those users being kids being issued school laptops probably doesn't translate to a lot of visible complaining about Chromebook-specific problems.

What? I passionately hate Chromebooks, firstly because they were conceived as a power grab by Google to get people to do everything through online Google services instead of locally, and secondly in a more personal way when I actually had to use one, in a remote hostel with ropey internet.

You hate Google. I don't like them, but they are OK computers that lack some important keys. Lacking a Meta key makes using Gnome less convenient.

You are not forced to use Gmail or Google Docs. You are mostly forced to use a browser, unless you jailbreak it.

I do

I respect you. It's very hard to be passionate about something as bland as a Chromebook. It's like being passionate about tofu, or toothpaste, or baby shampoo.

Me too

I recently helped liberate about 70 EOL'ed Chromebooks. Now students in a college near me will get free laptops they can actually use for college work, running the latest and greatest Linux distros.

SusyQ USB-C Cable + USB-A to USB-C Cable + Coreboot?

Recently liberated a Chromebook that powerwashed my hours of manual provisioning again due to remote login control failure FWICS

Can't believe how much faster the same machine is with a modern Linux distro.

(ChromiumOS was originally Gnome and Chrome on a Gentoo derivative by Linux workstation users, but now has a "Turn on Linux" button greyed out for all the kids.)

Mrchromebox > Supported Devices: https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/supported-devices.html

It's possible to install a list of apps with a script on Win, Mac, and Linux computers.

Try to `adb install com.google.android.calculator`.

Which should be the security priority? App download counts or automated provisioning?

Oh well that's a different matter. Nobody hates acceptable cheap hardware.

Oh I thought it was a very dodgy process. Can you give some pointers? I will also ask an LLM?

Here you go

https://mrchromebox.tech/

This was it. It involved dismantling the machine, removing a screw, and some other maneuvers.

Depends on the Chromebook. Some use a screw as a write protect jumper, some do not.

Agreed. This was, so far, my worst experience with liberation of locked down machines. It’s fun that it scaled to that many units.