Stop Calling these “Chromebooks”

[JordB]

While many of you hate Chromebooks, we think they are slowly taking over the market. To be fair Chromebooks have come a long way and are not E-Waste like tons of people still think they are. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on Chromebooks!

 

 

Buy an Acer 15.6" Chromebook Plus 515: https://lmg.gg/Wo6ZH (Canada: https://lmg.gg/NIuta )

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

[GodAtum]

Maybe. For just email and web browsing, most people still buy ipads.

[powertoys]

 

8 GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD and a 1080p IPS screen as minimum requirements is something that Microsoft should have done with Windows 11. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually think that they didn't go far enough. Doing so would get rid of the wasteland that is the sub-$200 laptop market that give Windows much of it's (honestly, 100% deserved) bad rep.

 

That laptop they've highlighted is a perfect example...

 

 

It has a Celeron N4120, which is actually one of the "nicest" 6W Celerons there is, since, at the very least, it's quad-core. It's a 2020 refresh of the 2018 Celeron N4100, the difference being 200 MHz of turbo boost. None if this matters, though, because the CPU alone still gets beaten to a pulp by a $150 Android smartphone... 

[Uttamattamakin]

This I agree with.  What has made LINUX usable in the enterprise was the support of a corporation to help if things didn't work, and smooth over the rough edges.  The same for UNIX and OSX.    That along with marketing and providing a UI/ UX for the average person. 

Chrome OS IS just installation of KDE (OR GNOME if you like) away from being essentially GNU Linux.  

The thing that really hinders a year of the Linux Desktop at this point is driver support.  Chromebooks solve that problem.  Take a look at the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook.  Top spec is over 2000 USD.    Compare that to say the Slimbook or Tuxedo computers type computers.  

IF LMG ever gives standard Linux the time of day review it on hardware like that which plays well with it.  If Linus himself ever does he ought to try a desktop that is not GNOME.  There are ages of flame wars about if KDE or GNOME are better.  People who hate one love the other. 

[JEskandari]

I'm not from north America and I never had the misfortune of having a Chromebook it seems Chromebook is popular there in school and it seems it pushed by school according to Linus

a question , what prevent people to use a laptop like one of these

https://www.amazon.com/A315-24P-R7VH-Display-Quad-Core-Processor-Graphics/dp/B0BS4BP8FB/ref=sr_1_7?qid=1707073753&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-7

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-3i-i3-1115G4-Processor-Platinum/dp/B0BV4G3XVN/ref=sr_1_46?qid=1707074144&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-46&th=1

 

except the price instead of Chromebooks, in school . is there a law to prevent it or is some required software that is only in chrome book or is there some feature which is not available in laptops?

 

[kaiosz]

At 5:15, there's some arguably extreme flashing imagery

[Middcore]

9 minutes ago, JEskandari said:

I'm not from north America and I never had the misfortune of having a Chromebook it seems Chromebook is popular there in school and it seems it pushed by school according to Linus

a question , what prevent people to use a laptop like one of these

https://www.amazon.com/A315-24P-R7VH-Display-Quad-Core-Processor-Graphics/dp/B0BS4BP8FB/ref=sr_1_7?qid=1707073753&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-7

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-3i-i3-1115G4-Processor-Platinum/dp/B0BV4G3XVN/ref=sr_1_46?qid=1707074144&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-46&th=1

 

except the price instead of Chromebooks, in school . 

Primary and secondary schools are typically going to require students to use only devices issued by the school for security reasons. Same as some jobs will let you bring your own device and some won't. 

[powertoys]

9 minutes ago, JEskandari said:

I'm not from north America and I never had the misfortune of having a Chromebook it seems Chromebook is popular there in school and it seems it pushed by school according to Linus

a question , what prevent people to use a laptop like one of these

https://www.amazon.com/A315-24P-R7VH-Display-Quad-Core-Processor-Graphics/dp/B0BS4BP8FB/ref=sr_1_7?qid=1707073753&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-7

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-3i-i3-1115G4-Processor-Platinum/dp/B0BV4G3XVN/ref=sr_1_46?qid=1707074144&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-46&th=1

 

except the price instead of Chromebooks, in school . is there a law to prevent it or is some required software that is only in chrome book or is there some feature which is not available in laptops?

 

In my country it's the same thing. Chromebooks are basically non existant save one or two really bad ones (for REALLY high, nonsense prices). iPads? L O L

 

Windows laptops in the 300~500 USD range are the default option here

[Senzelian]

Google is the only company that's absolutely everywhere. No matter what you do, you're interacting with them and generating profit for them in one way or another. They're after Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Meta all at the same time and I do not doubt in my mind that they can succeed and grab a massive chunk out of each company's market share.

[silentdragon95]

The main thing I dislike about Chromebooks is the fact that they are just yet another tool by Google to collect your data and lock you into their ecosystem. And the fact that they are popular in schools (at least in the US) means that this happens from a very young age. I wish Mozillas Firefox OS would have taken off instead, but... Oh well. Of course most people don't actually care about that.

 

I do think that a tablet (which, let's be real, is going to be an iPad) is better suited for a classroom, simply because you can use the pencil to write notes on it, but then again when I went to primary school 20 years ago we were proud of having a computer in the classroom, so what do I know. ^{It could however run Pinball! Take that, Chromebooks!}

 

But I do see the merits ChromeOS has. It's actually pretty easy to use and, unlike on Windows, it is a really hard for inexperienced users to screw something up by clicking the wrong link or downloading the wrong file. It does share these advantages with iPads and MacBooks, however against those Chromebooks tend to have a price advantage and ChromeOS is also a lot more feature complete than iPad OS these days. Ultimately, I don't see myself ever owning one, but I can understand that for some people it is pretty much just the perfect laptop.

[Tideroo]

Kinda disappointed Linux didn't talked about "converting" these chromebook to a regular linux distro or even Windows.

 

I did that with mine (Acer CB3-431, paid 250€ for it) pretty much as soon as I could. It only has 32GB of storage and 4GB of ram so Windows is a bad idea (with only chrome installed for my mom and despite many optimizations done such as "compact /compactos:query" the disk was already full within a single DAY ) but for linux ? It works damn well ! You can watch 1080p videos on YT, play some games like FTL, run 16/32 bits emulators.. 100% worth it for me.

 

Especially when you now have more powerful variants (like the "Chromebook Plus" lineup), it just makes more sense money wise to grab one then "converting" them to regular computers. You may lose a bit of storage space compared to a regular computer (as they only hold 32-128GB on average), but for students or if you have an external storage drive it'll be more than enough for your needs IMO. It all sounds like some dirty hack and it kinda is I'll admit, but just don't avoid Chromebooks solely because you think you'll be forever stuck with ChromeOS. You won't.

[Tideroo]

12 hours ago, Senzelian said:

Google is the only company that's absolutely everywhere. No matter what you do, you're interacting with them and generating profit for them in one way or another. They're after Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Meta all at the same time and I do not doubt in my mind that they can succeed and grab a massive chunk out of each company's market share.

Off-topic a bit but yea, it's kinda hard to avoid the "Google" ecosystem. On android phones you're stuck with the usual Graphene/Calyx alternative which isn't perfect but there's no better solution aside from Linux which is nothing but good for your regular user ATM, and on your computer aside from using Firefox (or alternatives based on Gecko) and a specific search engine* you simply can't avoid it. And now since ~10 years or so they even have their own OS. It's very clear they want us to consider them as part of our daily lives much like Apple, and make us think all our data is safe with them (which isn't). Kinda sucks but it makes it easier for the consumer, everyone around me is dependent on Google right now

[Skipple]

5 hours ago, Tideroo said:

Kinda disappointed Linux didn't talked about "converting" these chromebook to a regular linux distro or even Windows.

 

Well, that's because converting a Chromebooks to another Linux distro or Windows isn't officially supported. Everything that Linus showed in this video is 100% supported and enabled by Google and the laptop manufacturers. 

[99_U-238]

128gb minimum? That is genuinely awful if you do actually want something long-term with education and stuff, not mentioning personal use even without gaming. That said, the price does make the damn things a pretty sweet piece for (really scuffed and beginner grade) botnets.

[Kisai]

14 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

 

The thing that really hinders a year of the Linux Desktop at this point is driver support.  Chromebooks solve that problem.  

Which has been the story for 25 years. Dell only ever half-heartedly supported Linux, and Redhat wasn't exactly helping here.

 

This is still a proprietary Linux distro, and there can come a day where Google decides to switch to something else (something they've shown they will do, since maintaining multiple OS's is also kinda stupid, Android? Fushia? ChromeOS?) 

 

Even the Steamdeck uses a Proprietary Linux distro of SteamOS.  

 

Propitiatory distros is not in the spirt of being a "Linux" distro. Since two devices running Linux can behave and give different experiences, it's not particularly fair to say Linux is succeeding or failing by that.

 

The Steamdeck and the ChromeOS are pretty different experiences, and both are pretty far from an out-of-the-box Ubuntu that was the "closest to a ready-to-run" experience.

[AndreiArgeanu]

5 hours ago, 99_U-238 said:

128gb minimum? That is genuinely awful if you do actually want something long-term with education and stuff, not mentioning personal use even without gaming. That said, the price does make the damn things a pretty sweet piece for (really scuffed and beginner grade) botnets.

It's decent. Any work you typically do on one of these devices isn't storage intensive and is usually stored in the cloud. Plenty of space for documents if you want to store them locally and for quite a few apps.

[sub68]

5 hours ago, 99_U-238 said:

128gb minimum? That is genuinely awful if you do actually want something long-term with education and stuff, not mentioning personal use even without gaming. That said, the price does make the damn things a pretty sweet piece for (really scuffed and beginner grade) botnets.

Laughs in using 32gb storage lenovo school chromebooks.

The only main storage problem is like photos/screenshots is the biggest, the OS takes like 4gb.

[ToboRobot]

5 hours ago, 99_U-238 said:

128gb minimum? That is genuinely awful if you do actually want something long-term with education and stuff, not mentioning personal use even without gaming. That said, the price does make the damn things a pretty sweet piece for (really scuffed and beginner grade) botnets.

Not really for many use cases.  For example, my Macbook Air has a 250GB drive, I am using 60GB and half that is the OS.  

I might be abnormal but I think small boot drives are great because you don't leave files on them (no room) and you end up with a better way to store and access files than having them scattered about various systems.  Embrace the cloud or NAS when it makes sense.

[Brian McKee]

I don't understand the point of this video. It seems eerily positive for what is essentially dystopian hardware.

Don't locked down laptops with limited support that only exist to collect all your information with hardware that you essentially don't own fly in the face of what LTT stands for? What exactly is the message anyways? Get ready for the end?

[Skipple]

28 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

dystopian hardware.

I think you missed the point. The entire point is that it isn't dystopian and has potential if one embraces the Linux side of the house. 

[Skipple]

37 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Embrace the cloud or NAS when it makes sense.

I was impressed how seamlessly ChromeOS picked up my SMB shares. I was able to map drives with far less effort than any Linux distro. 

[ToboRobot]

32 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

I don't understand the point of this video. It seems eerily positive for what is essentially dystopian hardware.

Don't locked down laptops with limited support that only exist to collect all your information with hardware that you essentially don't own fly in the face of what LTT stands for? What exactly is the message anyways? Get ready for the end?

Are you falling into the trap of not liking something because it is not what YOU want, but failing to consider that other people have different wants and needs and maybe they want and need Chromebooks?

Lots of people don't need a truck and therefore don't see how OTHER people could want or need a truck and therefore think trucks are stupid and people that drive them are stupid.  But maybe those people would think differently if they actually had a use for a truck on a regular basis.

I don't need or want a Chromebook or a truck, but I can totally see how for some people it would be perfect.  They can have their chromebook and I will have my gaming PC.  Just like I can ride my bike and not think that someone in a truck is an idiot.

 

 

[sub68]

I know most people will not like my take but hey I am someone that is a student and troubleshoots with these everyday

 

(I dont use one any more I use a macbook air from 2017 lol) while intouch with IT school around my area.

Background: my district lets you bring your own device from 6th grade. (the windows laptop I had back than sucked) they had 11in macbook airs (original education spec). still have macbooks for certain arts courses, lab computers lenovo desktops, but most are chromebooks.

 

The district has 23 IT techs within that around 8 sys admin and network admin around 9 are building technicians (district runs like 15 buildings) rest arent enough trained for running a server). This is the most for a district around me and still they are swamped with work that isnt chromebook related. higher more people for school IT, we wish, but education type is a very high turn over rate.

 

Google claims they dont track data, but not 3rd party apps.

Should there be a more security conscious service like google education? probably yeah but there isnt any polish ones on the market that would run without hitches and no with almost zero maintenance.

Another problem google doesnt support a device when its more than say 5 years old so at somepoint its just ewaste.

 

Schools get really good discounts on this like a device is like half off, but also get grants to further more it.

18 hours ago, JEskandari said:

I'm not from north America and I never had the misfortune of having a Chromebook it seems Chromebook is popular there in school and it seems it pushed by school according to Linus

a question , what prevent people to use a laptop like one of these

https://www.amazon.com/A315-24P-R7VH-Display-Quad-Core-Processor-Graphics/dp/B0BS4BP8FB/ref=sr_1_7?qid=1707073753&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-7

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-3i-i3-1115G4-Processor-Platinum/dp/B0BV4G3XVN/ref=sr_1_46?qid=1707074144&s=computers-intl-ship&sr=1-46&th=1

 

except the price instead of Chromebooks, in school . is there a law to prevent it or is some required software that is only in chrome book or is there some feature which is not available in laptops?

 

School dependent, but security operation of a average district sometimes they dont have the man power to run wifi services for it.

15 hours ago, silentdragon95 said:

I do think that a tablet (which, let's be real, is going to be an iPad) is better suited for a classroom, simply because you can use the pencil to write notes on it, but then again when I went to primary school 20 years ago we were proud of having a computer in the classroom, so what do I know. ^{It could however run Pinball! Take that, Chromebooks!}

Yeah school has changed alot, like the TI83 changed the education sector so has chromebooks everything is a electronic.

Only like math is on paper.

19 hours ago, powertoys said:

It has a Celeron N4120, which is actually one of the "nicest" 6W Celerons there is, since, at the very least, it's quad-core. It's a 2020 refresh of the 2018 Celeron N4100, the difference being 200 MHz of turbo boost. None if this matters, though, because the CPU alone still gets beaten to a pulp by a $150 Android smartphone... 

Yeah? its still expensive as heck for a district to buy mass quantities comparble also chrome os doesnt need a lot to run.

[sub68]

48 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Not really for many use cases.  For example, my Macbook Air has a 250GB drive, I am using 60GB and half that is the OS.  

I am running a 128gb macbook air do I wish I had more storage? yes, I am running a ton of music applications so it make sense why my thing is so full. but its going ok so far

43 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

I don't understand the point of this video. It seems eerily positive for what is essentially dystopian hardware.

Don't locked down laptops with limited support that only exist to collect all your information with hardware that you essentially don't own fly in the face of what LTT stands for? What exactly is the message anyways? Get ready for the end?

its not meant for everyone... do want to give your grandma a linux machine.

[BoomerDutch]

15 minutes ago, Skipple said:

I was impressed how seamlessly ChromeOS picked up my SMB shares. I was able to map drives with far less effort than any Linux distro. 

That's because they included support of smb sharing and its acting like windows.

It's gonna include everything so yes it has support smb sharing.

 

Linux is simply baseline and google devs worked on it and build it and test it and make it easier for everyone.

 

So its kinda expected.

 

I get why many linux users dislike it.

Because PACKAGES AURGH.