ChromeOS is splitting the browser from the OS, getting more Linux-y

If you want kids to have laptops - which is really the questionable thing to begin with - then Chromebooks are safer and easier to secure against the typical kinds of threats a school cares about than Windows PCs and cheaper than Macs.

I think a bigger question is why kids need laptops at all..

It's pretty much this way anyway, the largest shareholders of CC and Mc Donalds are also the largest shareholders of largest outsource catering providers.

>a corporation specialized in advertising and data harvesting

You could be describing Microsoft in 2023, e.g. Chromium-based Edge, Windows 11 start menu ads, Xbox Live background services being integral to Windows even on government/corporate computers, the unholy marriage of Bing & OpenAI, Windows Live ID, outlook.com, every corporation being cool with putting their data into Azure/Office 365, etc.

Google, Microsoft, and Apple are all evil in their own ways. Chrome OS is significantly more reliable than Windows, macOS, or desktop Linux and Chromebooks tend to be cheap (although Windows craptops are catching up).

Because they're the best tool for the job.

It's not like we're replacing healthy lunches with Coke.

It's either Chromebooks, or expensive, clunky, virus-prone, impossible-to-administer Windows PCs.

It is also popular in some parts of Scandinavia.

Why you ask?

As a school teacher I can see

- for ages no proper trained IT staff in schools

- I know better linux, rpi than them. Heck they read IT news from cnet.com

- managing+ security in local servers is very difficult

- money for space

- google edu is/was almost free

- HIPAA equivalent rules

- though everyone will talk and tell linux, libreoffice

- the polishing and consistency of chromeos is great (for cheap $150 laptop)

- ideally linux foundation or some one should have made a 'school appliance' but ...

The startup I work for sells to education customers in Scandinavia. It is my impression that schools are either "Microsoft schools" or "Google schools" (these are the terms used).

The Danish data protection agency made some ruling against Google that ought to have meant, if the existing rules had been followed, that kids weren't allowed to use Chromebooks, but the schools said they couldn't teach kids without them, so the rules weren't followed.

Yes, it's great.

Because schools need cheap laptops that are easy to centrally manage by a single platform. Google also has a Workspace for Education suite that includes all the Google Docs stuff and teacher tools (Google Classroom). They also have a no ads or data collected policy.

It's very enticing. There's no real competition. The closest is Microsoft but Windows machines are much more expensive to manage and have worse performance on low-end hardware.

Let's imagine what HN wants - a Linux laptop running Firefox and LibreOffice. You're not going to get fleet management features, collaborative document editing, or built-in classroom management tools. Kids are still going to Google to search for things (and use ChatGPT).

No mandate. However chromebooks when they came out were a HUGE improvement over low end windows laptops. They are crazy durable, include instructions for when you pour soda into the keyboard, are durable enough to be thrown, leave a mark on the ceiling, and still survive. They run well even on old hardware, 4GB ram is plenty. They also don't get viruses, don't require any local expertise, don't require backups, don't require any software licenses, no virus scanning, and have minimal requirements from central IT. If a student manages to kill one you can literally just hand them another and say login.

So the savings in hardware costs, reduced support costs, and the "it just works" design is pretty attractive to school districts. Who'd have thought a $180 laptop could be durable, useful, no crapware/malware/ransomware, and last a decade?

Sure it would be nice if it didn't depend on google, but nobody else was stepping up.

My kid has had three over the last decade, the last we paid $50 to keep when she graduated. It's still being used years later.

You need to be more specific. Chromebooks are common in parts of Europe.

They would really be doing nothing more than what Google is doing with Chromebooks.

The whole idea of the Chromebook is that its sort of an internet appliance that you is supposed to be automatically updated and secure, and if in doubt, rebooting will return it to a known good state. If ChromeOS can run any random thing it's just a normal Linux laptop at that point.

That's why Developer mode isn't for the average buyer of a ChromeOS device, you have to hold down keys and specifically enable it after a big warning screen saying it will delete all data.

The official ChromeOS Linux support is a container that is inside of a VM.

Because APKs run in a pretty secure sandbox?

But android is sandboxed

The equivalent is linux/crostini

Those APKs run on a virtual machine (ART), inside of a virtual machine (ARCVM).

https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/making-android-more-secure-wit...

Yes. The beta channel for ChromeOS seems to have a new release every week. I usually ignore it until the Linux shell or Steam stops working, then relent and let it reboot.