Comment by ewoodrich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ewoodrich | Hacker News Reader

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>I'm actually in the market for a new laptop/netbook. I was very close to purchasing a ChromeOS device as I work primarily on a desktop and have a laptop for travel but its pretty old, heavy and battery unfriendly. Then I found out I had to void the warranty to properly dual boot.

I assume you mean having to wait or hit Ctrl-D and manually start a shell?

Personally, in some ways I prefer it that way. I have two Chromebooks, and mostly use Crouton, but I've restored them back to factory state with a single keystroke several times, and it makes me confident that I can easily revert after messing with the OS.

EDIT:

Seems like a giant fuck you to the Linux community given how much Google has benefited from Linux(ChromeOS even runs on the Linux kernel) and they put out laptops that are more locked down than your average windows laptops? Pretty disappointing

That's pretty unfair, Google contributes upstream for both ChromeOS and Android, and from the start they allowed an easily accessible developer mode, while prioritizing the security and simplicity for normal consumers.

My opinion was primarily based on this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/207wlm/is_it_possi...

I can't think of one good reason why a SINGLE keypress at boot can wipe everything and revert to factory settings. Moreover it isn't even password protected.

If you don't reflash the bios and you are dual booting ANYONE can walk over, turn your computer on, press space, and tada your computer is wiped.

This is the screen: http://imgur.com/wMtvgX3 I'd be willing to bet the majority of people would press space faced with that, especially after 15-20s of it sitting there doing nothing. (it sits at that screen for 30s unless you hit Ctrl-D)

The only reason I can think of that anyone would implement something so inane would be to discourage people from dual booting.

edit: I don't disagree that Google has contributed a lot to the Linux community. Overall I'm a pretty big fan of Google and I use a lot of their products. That said I still think their approach to ChromeOS has been very unfriendly towards Linux users. (they're bad vs. what they did was bad)

My 14 year old daughter runs chromeOS and xubuntu on her Chromebook and she takes it to school and she has never had a problem with it being wiped. She is, however, aware that files stored on that machine internally could be lost and she takes precaution.

I bought our first HP Chromebook 14 as refurb off and love it so much I bought a second one. They are both in constant use in our household. My wife even prefers to use hers over her desktop.

The Linux partition and all the data will also be wiped if the battery runs out while the Chromebook is in sleep mode.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261156

https://plus.google.com/111049168280159033135/posts/4nkSEmGo...

Not exactly true, see https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/deve...

I was actually the guinea pig for that fix: https://plus.google.com/100479847213284361344/posts/9FaVBgxP... .

That may be true for the Pixel (I don't have one). But I've drained the battery on both my Chromebooks (HP 14 and c720) a number of times, and have never lost data on the stateful partition. I have replaced the SSD on both of them, however, so it could be hardware specific.

The only reason I can think of that anyone would implement something so inane would be to discourage people from dual booting.

Or, as an example, to make sure that you won't "mod" your Grandma's computer and silently break auto-updates or cause performance issues without her knowing. The screen is clearly designed for non power-users, and Google wants it to look as scary as possible to dissuade consumers who are just following a tutorial online, or something.

EDIT: I'm surprised this is controversial. It's one of the express reasons for verified boot warnings.

One word: Schools.

The devices have to be reset each year. Administration of thousands of laptops across an entire district is easier with Chromebooks than with any other device. The angst many posters are expressing is possibly alleviated by Elementary OS.

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