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Google fucked a whole generation with Chromebooks, and now they're fucking the next generation with AI
(slrpnk.net)
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Most Chromebooks offered Linux on them. Even Linus Torvalds used a Chromebook when travelling to develop via it. Presumably because he was sick to death of "troubleshooting" when he had other, better things to do. And presumably schools and teachers also have better things to do than deal with bs like conflicting packages, missing drivers, viruses or whatever on every kid's device.
You are correct that most chromebooks can have Linux installed on them.
I don't think that's relevant in a discussion about Chromebooks in a school setting - were schools encouraging their students to install Linux?
Doesn't matter if they encourage it or, not, the option is there. So if kids want to mess around, compile stuff, run Linux games they can totally do it. The main purpose of the laptop however would be to do work, save / submit stuff to the cloud, run all day and be cheap so if it gets stolen or broken it's less expense to replace. I think in that role the Chromebook is the best solution anyone came up with. And there were a long line of contenders.
Is the option actually there, as in it's allowed by school policy? Would you be able to show an example confirming this?
I highly doubt a school IT department would be okay with this. The very post were discussing asserts that it was marketed to schools as something that can be locked down.
I'd also argue that even if it was allowed, whether or not it was encouraged undoubtedly matters.
These are kids we're talking about, not engineers. Additionally, were discussing technical competence at the generational level, so we'd have to rule out outliers, which I'd handily believe "kids who installed linux on their school Chromebooks" would fall under.
I don't have my Chromebook to hand but I believe the setting is in the Prefs. When you set up Linux it's a virtualized Debian that you can pretty much do anything with but it can't mess with ChromeOS outside. Not all Chromebooks support it since it's space / CPU dependent but if it does then it's Linux. I was even running graphical apps since the screen is a Wayland server.
I don't....think that answered my question?
Would this be against school policy? Are there examples to confirm this?
All Chromebooks ARE Linux. ChromeOS is a Linux based operating system. Whether or not you can get to the lower level is a different discussion. I had one of the first Chromebooks, you have always been able to root them and do what you want with them.