When my Chromebook fell out of "support" it became useless. Like, I couldn't open a console or run Crouton to do what I needed to do. The hardware was fine, just Google remotely broke my machine. I liked my Chromebook, but will never get another one. I'm happy with my used Thinkpad that cost about as much as the Chromebook. I'm finished with Google.
I'm in the same boat on not buying new Chromebooks. I was able to convert one of my old x86 one into a Linux machine by flashing the bios, but converting Arm ones is even less certain.