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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

You are completely failing to grasp the level of tyranny here. Schools these days often will not accept non-Chromebook devices.

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And the root of the tyranny is devices you 'buy' without owning. Something the parent commentor has probably been trying to warn everyone about since it was first pushed in the 90s like most other long term linux users.

'trusted' computing is tyranniclal, petty managers and school boards exploiting it is its intended use case

Probably shouldn't go round accusing Linux users of "failing to grasp the level of tyranny" when it comes to people forcing the use of Apple, Google or Microsoft operating systems.

how can they enforce that as a public school?

Same way they dictate which graphing calculator you buy?

and how do they do that?

I'm curious on how they enforce that

Presumably, the same way they enforce any other supply requirements.

Simply by using some application for things like online test taking that only works on ChromeOS. If you can't afford to buy a Chromebook, you may be eligible to receive one free from the school.

Even in college, we had a freshman year computer requirement where we had to have a Tablet PC. Freshman engineering classes all used a Windows-only handwriting application for class participation. The Tablet PCs they sold at the time were expensive and crappy. Luckily the application worked in Wine somehow and you could get by using a cheap Wacom tablet so that's what I did. I sold the Wacom to another freshman so they could do the same. Eventually I bought a used Thinkpad tablet PC because I actually liked handwriting my notes and homework but I hated the fact I was almost forced to.

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