2y ago

Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin

www.mercurynews.com Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin

Doubling the lifespan of older Chromebooks would save California’s schools $225 million, according to advocacy group CALPIRG.

There are few things quite as emblematic of late stage capitalism than the concept of "planned obsolescence".

Late Stage Capitalism @lemmygrad.ml

HiddenLayer5 @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin

www.mercurynews.com /2023/07/24/built-in-software-death-dates-are-sending-thousands-of-schools-chromebooks-to-the-recycling-bin/

68 20

276 comments

“These 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,” said Peter Du, communications manager for ChromeOS. “For this reason, older Chrome devices cannot receive updates indefinitely to enable new OS and browser features.”
Bull. Shit.
- I have an 8 year old iPad that can still use Amazon video and can still run Netflix, and google drops support for these computers as early as 3 years. I’m not an Apple fanboy but that is absolutely ridiculous.
  
  Apple does the same thing if you don't already have those installed
  
  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.
  
  Huh? I have an ipad mini and since two-three years ago it's as useful as a brick, Apple doesn't allow me to install any app because they require a newer os version (that's not available for the model)
  By contrast my much older nexus 7 can still use most apps that I want
  
  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.
  
  I have a 15 year old laptop that can still browse the web and play YouTube videos just fine because PC is a standardized platform with an open standard bootloader and a BIOS/UEFI system designed to abstract the hardware so the OS doesn't have to be tailor-made to the hardware. Mobile devices are absolute shit in this regard. Why does the OS have to be specifically built to target one particular device?
  It shouldn't. End of question. This applies to Android, ChromeOS, and Apple devices equally.
  I'm glad mobile Linux is starting to take off and there seem to be some standards emerging around ARM booting, even if it is still an absolute shit show compared to the standardization of UEFI/BIOS on x86/x86-64. I know some ARM systems can UEFI boot but it's few and far between still so most devices still need a tailored kernel at least. That said, ARM Linux doesn't need the entire freaking stack tailored to a device like Android and iOS do.
- Weeell "bullshit" is easy to claim but not necessarily untrue. So with android phones this is definitely a problem. Industry wide firmware support for these ARM SOC-s are often ranging from not long enough, to fucking atrocious. You get basically two years of new drivers, and a security update maybe. The way LinageOS manages to support phones like the note 3, from like android 4, to 11, is basically creating manifests, that use drivers from newer, still supported, but "similar-ish" components. And the note 3 was a flagship device, easily the fastest phone of it's generation. These Chromebooks, especially the ones schools can and do afford, are built to the penny. There is ultimately no point in pushing a software update to a device for a significant cost, that makes it so slow that no reasonable person would ever consider using it.
  What is the solution to this? Hard to say. Not buying hardware so incredibly obsolete that it has to run an alternate OS, is a start. Maybe just use PC-s and deploy linux.
  
  The solution is to let people use the device in any way they want and can. Software should not dictate hardware obsolescence.
  
  Aren't most Chromebooks out there Intel CPUs and essentially PC hardware? I know there are a few arm ones but it's not most of them.
- Fuck these Corporations, the only reason for this is to get the public school systems to constantly buy new chromebooks.

Reviving Chromebooks with Ubuntu: Autonomous Servers, Planned Obsolescence, and Permacomputing
- That's what they should be doing, but it isn't what they're 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 wasn’t up to par. “It’s like the Fritos of software,” he said. “No one really wants to use it.”
  Now, I'm not sure if what they tried was Linux, but I wouldn't 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 we'll have to contend with the phonification of mainstream computing in the coming years.
  
  As a lover of Frito pie, I take offense to this
  
  It's 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 can't 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.
  
  What kind of monster doesn't like Fritos?
  
  I've heard of CS majors coming in these days not knowing what a filesystem is.
  
  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 it’s lacking ram still.
  I think schools could easily band together & make their own education focused Linux distro & then just focus on hardware that’s compatible w/ that’s 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.
  
  Well, 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.
  
  @UngodlyAudrey @cerement there's chrultrabook project focused on allowing to install Windows or Linux https://chrultrabook.github.io/docs/
- I love this, the idea that the hardware is done once the software gives out is asinine. It’s also what companies have been selling us on for decades now. It’s long past time to rethink the idea of what hardware lifespan really looks like
- Yes!! 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.)
  
  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.
  
  same article mentions Chromebooks are a great alternative to Raspberry Pis – cheaper and come with a built in keyboard and screen for monitoring all your automation needs …

Companies making mass market devices should be required by law to support them indefinitely, or until they publish the technical specs sufficient for community support and repair.
The upgrade cycle they're allowed to get away with today is not only a ridiculous drain on people's money, but also a shameful source of pollution and waste.
- until they publish the technical specs sufficient for community support and repair.
  I want to see phones with no further official OS support have their boot loaders opened up so a lightweight OS can be installed on them instead. I've had iPhones in the past that have been absolutely rock solid after a battery replacement that lost iOS support, and with that a whole bunch of resale value. So I now tend to sell mine a year or so before they're likely to be dropped.
  But I genuinely think that I'd hold on to an iPhone that could have an alternative OS installed. This is, of course, why none of the major manufacturers allow this. Gotta put the profits ahead of the ethics.
  
  Actually in the Android community Sony helps you unlock your bootloader and offers official AOSP sources for their devices that you can compile and install yourself.
  I have no idea why people are enamored with Samsung.
  
  Exactly, bootloader locking should be downright illegal. If EU wants to make phones last, they need to mandate that you can unlock the bootloader (WITHOUT bullshit like having to get an unlock code from the manufacturer). Want to lock it down for certain software features like payments, etc? Ok, fine, I can live with that, so long as I can unlock it if I so choose and keep all HARDWARE functionality intact.
  On another note, the manufacturers should be upstreaming and mainlining their drivers in the Linux kernel. ChromeOS and Android are both built on Linux, yet they keep all their hardware support in forks and branches that are left to wither and die rather than submitting those changes upstream. Only a select few ARM SoCs have mainline support. If the companies would just put a bit of extra effort into doing things right rather than the shitty hack jobs they do now to get products out the door as fast as possible, we could have a much better ecosystem around old phones. Of course, the shittiness is by design.

Comments upon comments ignorant of the realities of the privacy laws governing this domain and the implications on firmware, driver and OS security support. "Just install Linux on it" is a completely unworkable solution. As some have pointed out, the places where this is done have a much thicker IT departments staffed with higher grade professionals to make it work. The thing to be mad here about is the shit support from vendors across the stack. If I had to guess, the worst offenders are probably the SoC vendors who typically ship firmware and driver updates as is the tradition.

This sounds like there's a market for a Linux distro that behaves like ChromeOS and can be centrally managed.
- The problem comes down to education institutions. I remember when we got Chromebooks in my highschool (8 years ago) admins forgot to turn of developer mode and half the school unenrolled the Chromebook managing to bypass all restrictions. This went on for half a year until one day our school needed to run a state exam (more for measure of schools performance not as a college entrance exam or anything).
  The computerized testing program required deploying a specific chrome app accessible when chrome book is logged out (can't just download from chrome web store). When they tried to push the client since half of Chromebooks were unenrolled it failed. This required the school it to recall pretty much all chrome books to manually re enroll all of them and disable developer mode (prevents unenrolling and prevents sideloading Linux).
  Problem is if older Chromebooks are used for Linux in an educational environment there would be nothing stopping a student from whipping up a bootable USB and dumping another distro (bypassing restrictions). I'm also not sure if there is a enrollment mode equivalent Linux (there may be but not sure).
  At least that's my two cents (not a school it admin just a memory from the past 😉).
  
  I never really understood the need for that strickt controll of the hardware... Who cares if Linux is sideloaded or if students unenroll. Imho I think if you need that strickt controll you are bound to get so many unnesseary issues down the line. Instead let student 6se what ever the fuck they want and for security just make sure they WiFi/ethernet is secure and locked down and any services the students need are behind a secure 2fa login. Treat any device as untrusted is more healthy for your security in the long run imo. If students need special software that they can't run on their own machines you can lend them a machine for that specific task for a specific time. Problem solved.
  
  Problem is if older Chromebooks are used for Linux in an educational environment there would be nothing stopping a student from whipping up a bootable USB and dumping another distro (bypassing restrictions). I’m also not sure if there is a enrollment mode equivalent Linux (there may be but not sure).
  They could just disable booting from USB drives in the bios and password protect it. They could install something like Fedora Silverblue, or even customize the image used to include whatever modifications they want. Any changes they made to the image would be propagated through autoupdates. Kids wouldn't have root, so they couldn't forcibly install a different OS. Of course they could install flatpaks to their home directory, which is probably something administrators would want to prevent, but a knowledgeable student can always find ways to do what they want.
  This of course requires schools/districts to hire people to manage that stuff, which could be a problem.
  
  (prevents unenrolling and prevents sideloading Linux)
  Should note that it's not completely foolproof, I know because I bypassed it. It's just not easy and technically you can get in trouble for it. Never got a 'vacation' for it though 😕

I manage my schools IT - and when we started out a few years ago my board were pushing aggressively for Chromebooks. The service provider were talking about how they could roll out hundreds of Chromebooks at the touch of a button. When I asked about the lifespan of a Chromebook I got vague answers. I knew we would get a couple of years max out of each one so I instead pushed for much more expensive MacBooks. 5 years on and we are still using our original MacBook we got back then, with photoshop and other software.
- I'm curious how something like Framework laptops would pan out for this use case. New they are currently priced similarly to a macbook, but in theory they are indefinitely serviceable.
  
  This is true! And you also don’t have to worry about the proprietary-ness of MacOS, and there are also (certain ways)[https://github.com/Gictorbit/photoshopCClinux] to get photoshop on Linux too.
- Ironically the only way to use some old Macbooks these days is to put Chrome OS Flex on them. Apple is far more aggressive about killing off old hardware when it feels like it. You can still use them as-is of course but over time the browser and other web based apps degrade and refuse to work because of issues with TLS, CA certs (expired), discontinued backend APIs and unsupported web content APIs.
  
  I have a 2015 fully specced 15" MacBook Pro that I'm trying to sell at the minute, which is proving more difficult than I thought it might, partly because the M-series Airs are so compelling, but also because it's an incredibly powerful machine that's officially locked to Monterey, which is now two years old.
  Beyond Apple's need for financial gains, I don't think there was a compelling reason to leave that model out of the Ventura upgrades.
  I had it running Ventura via OCLP, which it had absolutely no trouble with at all. But I can't sell it in that state because while it's pretty stable, there is still some extra fiddling needed with running an unsupported OS.
  
  For me issues have only really started around the 5-8 years mark depending on the device which is ok-ish since the hardware is extremely outdated then anyway.
- x86 Macs are not the greatest example of longevity at this point.
  
  Really? I just handed down a 2017 MacBook Pro -- still supported by Apple, meaning it runs the latest OS, and gets patches.
  Can you give me an example of any other device with longer software support from the original vendor, at no cost to the end user?
  
  Not ideal that we had a percentage of our MacBooks on x86 cpus when the M1’s came out. But I will say they are still running strong. Others have pointed out that newer OS updates won’t work on the older MacBooks. But that’s not a deal breaker for us as we don’t run anything that’s OS specific enough to make the older models obsolete. We have factored in 5 - 7 years of use out of the laptops and we’re on course for that. I myself and using a 10 year old MacBook at home, and although I can’t fire up the latest Adobe Premiere on it, I can certainly get 99% of my work done on it.

Honestly people should stop buying Google products....

Chromebooks expire? What the fuck? Are there logistical problems with installing Linux on these devices?
- Chromebooks are unfortunately meant to be disposable like phones. Nobody should buy one, but unfortunately schools get them because they're cheap.
  On an individual basis you can install Linux, but for millions of devices thrown out by schools around the world, there's no solution because the residual value is so tiny, you'd have to pay the techs minimum wage and hold a gun to their heads to get enough devices per hour to justify it.
  I used to work at a refurb place and when we saw a chromebook that wasn't immediately OK (it could've had a bad display or keyboard, or locked to an account), we just removed the eMMC, smashed the chip and threw the device on our scrap pallet.
  
  Give them to the kids with a QR code guide sticker about installing Linux on them? I'm not a kid, but I would love if someone "threw" a couple of these in my general direction.
  
  Phones shouldn't be disposable either, I'm coming up on five years on mine.
  
  Is there something preventing the use of ansible or similar, to handle the installs?
- I think its more that Google supports them for only so long and then they go bitrotten. The final update for these devices should also unlock the firmware so people can wipe the device and install Linux or something on it.
- the Chromebooks with ARM processor (the majority of the cheaper ones) are notoriously known to be awful to install any alternative operating system
- Not really, but it's almost impossible for a school to pull that off and still get the support needed. Don't forget that new Chromebooks are dirt cheap, after all discounts probably in the 100-200$/€ range. It's (sadly) just not worth it salvaging them.

All of these machines make for decent Linux laptops. I picked up an EOL Chromebook for $35 last year and installed Debian on it. Decent little machine. Not terribly fast but very useable.
- These are Linux laptops. But yes, they'll work better if you put your preferred distro on them.
- I turned one into an Emacs machine, it was £20 and I fucking love it. It's built like a tank too. It's a dell Chromebook 11.
- Good to know. Is it still a PITA to make the firmware let you change the OS?
  
  Most modern ones it's just commands you have to run. You can usually find an easy walk-though on the MrChromebox website. I haven't seen one that required a jumper or anything in a LONG time.
  
  Mine was really easy (dell chromebook 11), just followed the instructions and I had no problems. I have another chromebook with an amd chipset that I can't change the firmware on though (last time I checked), so if you're planning to buy one to convert make sure you actually can do it first.

still using things like Google Chrome or Chromebooks in 2023 is actually reckless behaviour. stuff like manifest v3 and the web integrity api just prove that google will use their monopoly to take over the open internet
- Yes, why have we as a society allowed Google of all companies to take over something as important as public education? It's downright dystopian.

Anyone 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.
- Sourcing Chromebooks from the Reviving Chromebooks with Ubuntu I posted elsewhere
  easiest looks like just calling the IT department of your local school
  
  Interesting article, I don't think I have a use for them though.
- Same here!

I agree that this is very bad on google’s part of course, however I don’t think the schools should just lie down and take it. As others have said, installing their own OS should be the way to go. It doesn’t need to be 1 person manually installing the OS on each laptop, there are Infrastructure automation tool like Ansible that can, once set up, manage installation and configuration of an arbitrary number of devices. All the device needs to do is launch a web browser from what I understand, and pretty much every linux distro should be able to do that. If they choose one with a friendly DE, then it makes it easier to use for the kids. The devices will most likely run much better on an OS without bloatware too.

I've been looking into getting a cheapo laptop to take outside, and Chromebooks caught my interest. However, literally everyone I spoke to about this idea recommended against it. After researching all the nuances to putting baremetal Linux on a $40 Chromebook (BIOS screws, firmware patches, etc), all so I could have 2GiB RAM and 16GiB of unreplaceable storage, I asked myself what the point even was. I might as well buy a(nother) Thinkpad T40 at that point.
Glad I didn't go with the Chromebook. Got a 2018 HP secondhand from a local college. For a little extra money, I have something with superior construction, specs, and upgrade potential.
- I was part of one of the first high school classes in the country to get chromebooks and oh boy were they AWFUL. Constant freezing, crashes, failure to boot them, all kinds of battery issues. For about six months we had teachers who relentlessly put their tests online and had us take t them on our chromebooks, but eventually most of them switched to paper because of the inevitable three-or-so students who would go "mine's not turning on" or "the screen's broken." They were fragile as hell too. The school said we'd lose our warranty if we were caught using them without the case, but even when they were inside the case they would regularly come out with cracked screens and broken keys. The internet speed on them was atrocious too. Our school wasn't known for ultra fast internet (in fact, some spots even were a cellphone data dead spot), but we had more than a dozen incidents of students using their phones to do assignments because the chromebook just wasn't connecting. The school had one IT technician and four librarians for a school of about 750, and they were working pretty much overtime due to how often the chromebooks would break.
  I remember at the start they said we only had one free repair and then every repair after that would cost us $50, but the school had to change it to 3 free repairs because everybody's chromebook (including mine) broke.
- Used laptops are the shit for basic web browsing.
  I just found a Lenovo T470s at a flea market (Flea@MIT, for anyone in the Boston area), 6th gen i5, 2x4GB RAM, and 128GB NVMe, with charger and W10 license…for $100.
  I bought a 1TB NVMe and a 16GB SODIMM for like $80. Dual-booting Fedora and W10 (fresh-installed…I don’t trust someone else’s installation). Since getting it (Fathers Day), I only needed Windows one time (Linux Fire Toolbox wasn’t working too well for me with my Prime-Day Kindle Fire).
  As a plus, the battery life is supreme as well, and upgrading the ram and NVMe were stupid simple, as they are on most the Lenovo T-series.

After reading all the comments, I'm just gonna say that if you don't allow kids to tinker and do their thing, they will learn a lot slower and your "investment" will be left mostly unused. (age range proper hardware/OS of course.) The school policy is not doing the kids a favor, it's a waste of time and tax money that you cultivate a generation of people get used to chrome book and google apps. That's the ultimate purpose for school license being cheaper.
- We've got young adults entering the workforce that cannot comprehend what a filesystem and directory structure is due to 10+ years of these sandboxed, guard-railed tech products.
  
  I now understand that existential crisis that people become too dumb or not capable of operating technologies developed by previous generation.(like the Walle movie.)

Planned Obsolesce should be a crime
- I would have agreed with that statement until I saw the most recent Technology Connections video about why the incandescent light bulb has planned obsolescence built in. Sometimes it's not malicious but to actually provide a compromise leading to an overall better product.
  I don't think software death dates count, tho.
  
  That wasn't planned obsolescence though, it was an industry-created standard for the tradeoff between efficiency, brightness, and lifespan. Planned obsolescence is specifically when a product is made to break sooner than it needs to.
  
  Software Death Dates strike me as more "Malware" than "Compromise"
  
  Light bulbs aren't planned obsolescence though, he even said as much in the video, light bulbs more akin to dish-soap which eventually runs out then a device made to be obsolete faster. They are consumable items, which run out or burn out, they are not expensive appliances with long lives, hell he even pointed out that some utilities gave them away for free.
  
  TLDR: I'm still very suspicious of how that is quantified - "leading to an overall better product".
  Who quantifies that and how, on a case by case basis, especially in the form of Chromebooks or phones for revenant, popular examples?
  Let's say it was a laptop: I can see issues with lithium batteries perhaps reaching a cycle count that lead them to be dangerous. Wouldn't that mean though you should produce a good that has replaceable batteries? Is the battery designed in such a manner on purpose?
  Businesses with shareholders that live quarter to quarterly profit are the issue. There is no authoritarian legislator that reallocates resources like China did the last few years, for example, whether you like it or not.
  The US relies on legislation to be passed to mandate the changes or prohibit a device from being built a certain way. That legislation can be lobbied for loopholes, have various people in power also own percentages of the companies, etc. Whether you agree with it or not, there are many checks and balances and simultaneously a lack thereof.
  
  but to actually provide a compromise leading to an overall better product.
  Could you elaborate a bit more on that?

I'm currently in the market for something like a Chromebook but I'm not buying one because of stuff like this.
- Lenovo yoga 11e, with linux. They're like 250 bucks and a great value. Tablet mode too. I prefer mine to my better laptops, honestly, because I don't have to worry about it at all.
- If you want a fancy Chromebook, there's the Framework Chromebook (or you could just get the regular Framework laptops)
- I am very happy using a surface go with Linux (used arch with GNOME for a while, now trying out KDE Neon for a change).

Why are schools pushing so hard for enslaved Linux laptops?
- Easier to manage for IT would certainly be my bet, and appealing cheap contracts. Even those Acer Aspires so many schools used were double the price of these Chromebooks, so suddenly youre talking about nearly halving a ~$100k cost. Schools want things locked down and enslaved, they couldn't care less that they are Linux under the hood. They don't think like you and I.
  
  Yep, this is it. I volunteered for my school's IT department in high school, this was basically the logic. The laptops are cheap and easy to manage/administrate. Whether or not they were Linux was a non-issue.
  Edit: also, since chromeOS is basically just a browser, there wasn't much that could break, and if something did break everything was stored in google drive anyway, so you could just factory reset the device and hand it back to the student without needing to buy any kind of higher-level support contract.
  
  Right? It's basically short term thinking on the school's part.

Awful!!! I remember using those junktops when I was in high school...
Made me realize I still have one lying around and I tried to put Linux on it, but they seem to only let you sandbox Linux in it...? Not able to enter BIOS supposedly due to the firmware is obnoxious. Is there any way to put coreboot on over the firmware or something?
- Most Chromebook's firmware is Coreboot, but it's running a Depthcharge payload instead of UEFI (or BIOS or whatever). Mr. Chromebox maintains UEFI Coreboot payloads and install tools for a wide variety of (x86) Chromebooks, which can be used to flash a normal UEFI payload and boot normal OSes. It's strictly possible to boot normal Linux systems on a the Depthcharge payload modern Chromebooks use, but uh... here's the gentoo wiki on it, it's a substantial pain in the ass.
  
  Yep I did that to my school Chromebook, they never asked for it back when I graduated and being a broke college student I decided to UEFI flash it and use it as a cheap Linux Computer, still using it now. It's not the fastest laptop but it's certainly good enough. It's really dumb that they enforce software expiration dates on these PCs when they're probably fully capable of running the next version perfectly fine.
  
  Apologies for the long wait for a response. Been trying to get back to people.
  I checked out the Chromebook I have and made a post on the Gentoo form, but don't believe I'm able to do it for my particular model because of how I'm sandboxed in a subsystem of something. Could I DM you and we could chat more about sending Chrome OS to the shadow realm?
- At a guess - they're likely selling those laptops at a loss and making the money back on (hopefully) service contracts or (probably) selling your data. As soon as you install a custom OS they won't support you (so you won't buy support) and they won't be able to sell your data.
  
  Sorry for the late response, I've been wading through my inbox to get back to most :)
  That's gotta be why they make it so damn hard to uninstall ChromeOS... I like that Linux is being popularized more, but I hear whispers from the F(L)OSS community in my head that Canonical and Microsoft are one in the same. Its a bit confusing some of the rhetoric surrounding certain companies and software other than the blatantly obvious like Microsoft or Google, but I'll never quite understand programmer "martian"...
  Have you worked on chrome books before and swapped the OS?
  
  That doesn't really add up. If they would sell them at a loss, they would want you to use them as long as possible.

Those are great for hosting a Ubuntu server (as long as they are not CPU intensive). You can buy a dongle to connect it to the router for Ethernet, then add a SD card or connect a hard drive by USB and it's quite solid. There's a few tweaks needed but it's an incredible learning experience.

I have preordered a framework laptop which will run Linux until it fucking blows up or falls apart.
Enough with being screwed over by well known brands whose interest is just selling you more and more stuff.

Not sure why everyone is so upset. This is nothing new. Has been happening for years with phones and tablets. They get at least 5 years of updates, which I think is pretty good. My kids have had the same CBs at their schools for 6 years and still going strong. Some of my laptops don't last that long.
- Not sure why everyone is so upset
  Because it's upsetting. The fact that it has been upsetting for years doesn't make it no longer upsetting.
  The attitude that old news shouldn't be upsetting enables upsetting behavior. And, quite frankly, I find that upsetting :-)
  
  I agree it could be better. But there's nothing I can do about it so I've learnt to not get upset by such things. I can't get upset by everything.
- To me it isn't acceptable that phones and tablets have that problem too, especially devices that could still have a decent performance.
  Windows has a lot of problems, but at least if you have Windows you will be supported for a long while, even if it gets slow due to Windows being Windows. Considering ChromeOS frames itself as a competitor of especially low end Windows, and that ChromeOS is more optimized than Windows, I would expect more.
  EDIT: The article says three to six years, and that they stop functioning. That's even worse.
  EDIT2: And like most phones, you can't flash another OS to most chromebooks.
  
  I agree it's not nice, some phones are abandoned within a year or two.
  I believe the CB will just stop receiving updates, it will still work. Over time there may come issues due to missing updates.
- 5 years is shit. People have been conditioned over the past 10-15 years to think that the mobile way of doing this is the correct way. Before that, your PC was an open system that you could upgrade and update until it was incapable of running the latest software due to hardware limitations (not enough RAM, GPU API level, processor extensions, etc). These days the mobile companies have convinced people that none of that matters. The software is so intrinsically tied to the hardware that even if the hardware is not much different to the new hardware, the new software won't work.
  A 15 year old PC can still do a lot of work on a modern OS these days. Why can't a 6 year old phone? Because the people who want you to buy a new phone said so.
  
  Not even that, computers don't work wit enough CPU, GPU RAM, are easily interchangeable

Good, maybe that will get them to stop using Chrome OS in schools, it has been a disaster for computer literacy in general.
- Not just schools. PCs have been on the decline against phones and tablets for ages now.
  If they don't have them at home, they won't learn shit about them.

The service life of the devices was known up-front. You can check for yourself the service life dates of every Chrome OS machine here:
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en
The correct deployment strategy would be to make a big purchase at the front end of a device's lifecycle and then only replacements from then on out so that you get the most out of every machine. Future capital purchases would be with a new device and termination date.
- I think this point is really important, and allow me to go one step further: I work in the public sector of education and purchasing technology is such a complex issue that IT governance has to be involved with decisions like this. That's to say that, without a governing body to review purchases (outside of whoever handles the actual procurement, i.e. funds leaving the bank account), mistakes like this will happen.
  We can be upset with planned obsolescence, but there's distinctly a human error here where there wasn't enough research and planning.

These things are such junk - even when new they were so slow and bloated that they couldn't load my kid's schoolwork half the time. I had to make sure he had an alternate laptop for use so he wouldn't fall behind. I felt really bad for the school district, it was clear they were being ripped off, and that most of the machines were going to be in a landfill within 3 years time.
- The article's claiming the problem is planned-obsolete software, not inadequate hardware.
  
  That's their claim, but what's in the old hardware?
- It's one of those you get what you pay for things. There's dirt cheap Chromebooks out there. There's more pricy ones. They're generally quite speedy for their intended purpose.
  
  I think the issue was that the ones Google offered at a bulk discount to schools were the low-end models that didn't have any memory upgrades, and there was a bunch of school-specific bloatware on it that compounded the issue. Multitasking flat out killed them, which made it difficult for my son to do anything with more than one window open. It even had issues with multiple browser tabs. I think he would have done better with a pen and paper and his library card than trying to use that thing for his schoolwork.

Anyone got a non-paywalled version of the article?
- Sorry! I didn’t realize it was paywalled because I could see the whole thing. Hopefully this should work:
  https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mercurynews.com%2F2023%2F07%2F24%2Fbuilt-in-software-death-dates-are-sending-thousands-of-schools-chromebooks-to-the-recycling-bin%2F
  
  Hmmm, I too could see it fine. Could be region-based.
- If you are on ios device, using safari, tap the link and, you have to quick, tap the AA at the far left corner of the safari search (URL bar) while page is starting to load.

My 15 years old Linux laptop can still do everything (except gaming new titles)
- Pffft... I can't even get a laptop battery to last that long.

When I was in 9th grade it was netbooks with Windows 7 and they were also terrible and fated for the recycling bin before I was a junior.
In most enterprise IT your lifespan for hardware is between 5 and 7 years maybe 10 for printers and network switches.
I'm sure most schools try to stretch hardware as far as it will go but IT would have known when they bought the Chromebooks that they'd not be long for this world as cheap as they were and that's the price they would pay for paying such a low price.
I think what is sticking up the works is on an administrative level, higher ups are expecting IT departments to stretch EOL dates like they used to do with Windows machines but now they absolutely can't and Admin didn't plan to have to buy all new whether or not IT did

Hey Mike Judge should make a movie about this

ok I'll bite, can't they reinstall the chromebooks with linux instead?
- Sure, but then they have to pay the salaries of an IT department to not only do the OS install on thousands of devices, but also provide support when things go wonky from kids doing dumb shit (it's Linux; there will be that one kid who figures out how to gain su privileges and convinces a couple others to rm -f / their shit). The same thought crossed my mind, but these are low spec $200 laptops that I really don't think it would be financially viable to do so.
  
  great scenario for an immutable distro
  
  Teach the kids to do it themselves - this allergy towards teaching any kind of computer skills these days is ridiculous.

I agree that this is very bad on google's part of course, however I don't think the schools should just lie down and take it. As others have said, installing their own OS should be the way to go. It doesn't need to be 1 person manually installing the OS on each laptop, there are Infrastructure automation tool like Ansible that can, once set up, manage installation and configuration of an arbitrary number of devices. All the device needs to do is launch a web browser from what I understand, and pretty much every linux distro should be able to do that. If they choose one with a friendly DE, then it makes it easier to use for the kids. The devices will most likely run much better on an OS without bloatware too.

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