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0 pointsAdaptive10y ago0 comments

I understand this concern. I've helped deploy chromebooks and linux based laptops and pcs at my daughters school. I am pro open source and would love to see lots of digging into understanding the systems. However I am also in favor of chromebooks. Here's why:

The alternative to chromebooks isn't a glorious world of non-locked down non-cloud dependent machines. It's a world of poorly managed, crappy windows boxes. A world where students pass around USB keys. A world that is at least as locked down as a chromebook but much less secure and in many ways less flexible.

Chromebooks, as locked down and hermetically sealed as they are as an ecosystem, are great for one simple reason: they free up time and resources. I'd rather see a fleet of chromebooks that are dead simple to manage and deploy and then take all that extra time and money and spend it on equipment a linux or osx or whatever based lab full of machines students can hack on and learn to code on and hook up to actuators or whatever they want to do.

90% of computer management in a school is dealing with day to day "can't print / how to load a document / etc". I've seen this completely evaporate at my daughter's school after rolling out chromebooks. It's amazing.

So bring on chromebooks as locked down, easy to manage dedicated "get homework done" devices and free up time and money (because man are they cheap) to teach programming and hardware and everything else in a real computer lab.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

stephenr10y ago· 3 in thread

> poorly managed, crappy windows boxes

> at least as locked down as a chromebook but much less secure

I fucking loathe windows, but Lucy, you've some 'splainin to do. How is a Windows PC "at least as locked down" as a Chromebook?

Remember that "locked down" in the case of a chromebook doesn't mean "the administrator has decided what apps you can run and who can use it", it means "the fundamental design of the operating system means it can only ever run browser based apps, and it's inherently reliant on Google's infrastructure to work".

If Microsoft shut up shop tomorrow, the billions of Windows PCs in the world would have a security issue, sure, but they wouldn't stop fucking working.

> So bring on chromebooks as locked down, easy to manage dedicated "into to being a google user" devices

Fixed that for you.

piyush_soni10y ago

I don't know what's inherently so bad about "being a google user". It's mostly paranoia. If the only hypothetical disadvantage you're thinking about it is "Google might shut down one day", then you're not thinking about a very near future. If the TV channels shut down tomorrow, your TVs effectively stop working too, you still buy them. There are hundreds of such devices out there, which you buy because it's pretty evident the company is not shutting down tomorrow. On the other hand, even if Google shuts down, a lot of things on your Chromebook will keep on working offline, especially with the advent of Android apps now.

stephenr10y ago

> I don't know what's inherently so bad about "being a google user".

Having every facet of your digital life mined for personal data, for the sake of a mega-corp's bottom line?

> If the only hypothetical disadvantage you're thinking about it is "Google might shut down one day"

Not at all. Its actually more likely "Google might stop supporting X, Y or Z that you depend on".. They, you know, have a history of doing that.

However, let's play along anyway.

> If the TV channels shut down tomorrow, your TVs effectively stop working too, you still buy them.

No. Just. No. I literally don't remember the last time I watched broadcast television (hotels excepted), even when I lived in a country where I could understand what was being said on the broadcast channels. In our last house 1 of 2 TV's was connected to a satellite receiver for when my father in law was in the house. We moved 3-4 months ago. No satellite dish hooked up yet. No terrestrial aerial.

> There are hundreds of such devices out there, which you buy because it's pretty evident the company is not shutting down tomorrow.

I do? Would you care to enlighten me about these devices I apparently buy?

> On the other hand, even if Google shuts down, a lot of things on your Chromebook will keep on working offline

Are you kidding me? In offline-mode, you can't even edit your calendar on a Chromebook.

You're also not thinking about things like e.g. users on the system. It's inherently dependent on Google - you can't just add a local account like you can with a regular computer, you have to be online, with the person sitting there next to you, so they can sign in with their own google account.

> especially with the advent of Android apps now

Right, because apps designed to work on a mobile phone, which generally has it's own data connection independent of whether wifi is available or not, will just naturally assume they need to work offline. Good luck with that.

3 more replies

millstone10y ago

There are some particularly concerning scenarios:

1. Google collects and stores information about my children, and it is released (by accident or otherwise)

2. Google profits off my childrens' education, has financial incentives not aligned with those of my family

but mostly I just think it's really fucking creepy for an advertising broker to be building up a profile of a first grade child, and I think maybe schools shouldn't become reliant on an ad company to help deliver education.

To assuage my concerns, Chromebooks should be usable without creating a Google ID. Or maybe the whole school should have a single ID used by all students.

soyiuz10y ago· 1 in thread

I also want to point out that Chromebooks can easily be turned into Linux machines with Crouton. They are not locked down in that sense.

jalami10y ago

It's not really easy depending on who you ask and running Crouton isn't really making it a linux box in this way as you're just running on top of ChromeOS with most of the hardware integration still handled by ChromeOS.

No school would endorse this because I'm sure crouton isn't in their support package. Doing it 'right' often implies opening the case, voiding your warranty, removing the write-protect screw, flashing away ChromeOS with a third party build of SeaBios, installing an unsupported Linux OS on the hardware and praying drivers exist in the mainline kernel for your device, then making due without any of the ChromeOS cloud-goodies your device was given from Google. Not really SOP for organizations buying in bulk with warranties.

I do it because I like small, cheap computers running Linux well and thankfully ChromeOS is Linux-y, but for most people, this is still very locked down. Even being able to unlock ChromeOS devices is probably more a side-effect than a willful desire from Google to be open.

userbinator10y ago

A world where students pass around USB keys.

That's a good thing, if your alternative is "upload files to a third-party server that might not even be in the same state and download them onto a machine sitting a few feet away. I don't believe the "security" argument either; for a long time schools have configured machines with software such that they don't persist changes across reboots, and that easily gets rid of any infection or unwanted changes.

free up time and money (because man are they cheap) to teach programming

That just widens the gap between users and programmers, and leads to the odd phenomenon of people coming out of "learn to code" classes knowing how to open an IDE and write and run code, but are otherwise still mostly computer-illiterate because they skipped the "implicit education" of dealing with the issues arising from normal computer usage. The problem is that the demographic between "normal user" and "coder", the "power users", has disappeared.

in a real computer lab.

Students should be using a "real computer" for everything they do, not just in special classes, as otherwise it leads to a situation where they perceive programming as something special for "approved" circumstances, and not merely a skill a "power user" can use to improve their productivity. It's somewhat reminiscent of http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

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