That's nice, but Chromebooks are designed to become e-waste after a period of only a few years (updates stop after the device gets to be a few years old).
Assuming the machine still works, unscrew the bootloader screw, wipe and put regular Linux on.
Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
41–50 of 186 posts
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#42Now we can do One Laptop Per Child. [1]
[1] The project originally aimed for a price of 100 US dollars. In May 2006, Negroponte told the Red Hat's annual user summit: "It is a floating price. We are a nonprofit organization. We have a target of $100 by 2008, but probably it will be $135, maybe $140."[32] A BBC news article in April 2010 indicated the price still remained above $200: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#43Now we can do One Laptop Per Child. [1] [1] The project originally aimed for a price of 100 US dollars. In May 2006, Negroponte told the Red Hat's annual user summit: "It is a floating price. We are a nonprofit organization. We have a target of $100 by 2008, but probably it will be $135, maybe $140."[32] A BBC news article in April 2010 indicated the price still remained above $200: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_…
[deleted]
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#44This reads like an advertisement and the constant comparisons with Apple products is weird. I can only assume the comparisons are being made because he or the people around him use very expensive Macbooks, but It doesn't help that this thread was written by the submitter and that he happens to be an engineer at Google talking about how great this cheap Chromebook is. Looking past that, It's good for developers to hav…
[deleted]
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#45How are the keyboard and trackpad? IMO, bad trackpads are the biggest pitfall of cheap (and not-so-cheap) laptops, by far. At least with a bad screen you can still generally read the interface without too much trouble, but a bad trackpad can make a computer really frustrating to use!
Wouldn't be a huge problem for me. If I am merely operating a device, then the touchscreen is good enough. For serious work, I use external peripherals anyway.
I don't think this computer has a touchscreen?
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#46This reads like an advertisement and the constant comparisons with Apple products is weird. I can only assume the comparisons are being made because he or the people around him use very expensive Macbooks, but It doesn't help that this thread was written by the submitter and that he happens to be an engineer at Google talking about how great this cheap Chromebook is. Looking past that, It's good for developers to hav…
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#47That's nice, but Chromebooks are designed to become e-waste after a period of only a few years (updates stop after the device gets to be a few years old).
I've had two over relatively few years. Both became paperweights. Cheap chromebooks are not worth wasting money.
You can't just run normal linux on them?
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#48> Like, real Linux, not some weird virtualized or translated environment. Ah, no. It is very much specifically in a container inside a VM. Now, full credit where it's due: You're unlikely to notice. Performance is good, they've done work integrating it (filesystem integration, forwarding windows to the host display servers through Sommelier). But native it is not. (Details: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumo…
This is correct, but also a lot of these machines can native boot Linux if you enable developer mode. It's not the most frictionless experience in the world, but it can work pretty well.
[deleted]
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#49> Like, real Linux, not some weird virtualized or translated environment. Ah, no. It is very much specifically in a container inside a VM. Now, full credit where it's due: You're unlikely to notice. Performance is good, they've done work integrating it (filesystem integration, forwarding windows to the host display servers through Sommelier). But native it is not. (Details: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumo…
This is correct, but also a lot of these machines can native boot Linux if you enable developer mode. It's not the most frictionless experience in the world, but it can work pretty well.
Oh sure; x86 Chromebooks that support https://mrchromebox.tech firmware upgrades are actually some of the nicest Linux laptops on the market once they've been unlocked and flashed. I just want to call out that the author is precisely backwards and Crostini is a VM and a container and not bare Linux on hardware.
Edit: There's also Crouton, for an intermediate option that does need developer mode.
Re: Unboxing a $100 Chromebook
#50What's the power consumption of a device like this? Can you flash Ubuntu on it? What about Pop OS!?