> this is extremely appealing either way
Not really, any standard computer gets updates forever.
(at least for Linux, I don't know other OSes really well).
Not really, any standard computer gets updates forever.
(at least for Linux, I don't know other OSes really well).
In fact, most of the biggest things holding back Linux in schools is the lack of a multi-billion dollar corporation extprting enough money that after the "student and educational discount version" is released and a few paltry assurances by a salesman that support will be a thing that school administrators are fine with provisioning networks of it.
Novell, contrary to popular belief, exists, and works just fine with Linux, windows, and Mac. Lets you use your own servers and cloud infra and everything. Novell itself is just a bunch of effort put into migration scripts, some custom OpenLDAP schemas, a few augmented endpoint agents/pieces of groupware, and the ever important to the Enterprise license management framework.
And for a Chromebook to be supported by Google means that exactly the same device runs in some Lab and every ChromeOS update gets regression tested against it before going live. That's a big difference to "just install Linux".
If this is a guarantee that the drivers will get security updates for 10 years and be mainlined into the linux kernel (and if there is a way to get these things with a normal keyboard and BIOS), then this is great news.
I'd never run ChromeOS, but would happily buy a flagship-grade laptop that lived up to the expectations in the previous paragraph (and then run Linux or even BSD on it).