There are few things quite as emblematic of late stage capitalism than the concept of “planned obsolescence”.

  • gronjo45@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Awful!!! I remember using those junktops when I was in high school…

    Made me realize I still have one lying around and I tried to put Linux on it, but they seem to only let you sandbox Linux in it…? Not able to enter BIOS supposedly due to the firmware is obnoxious. Is there any way to put coreboot on over the firmware or something?

    • PAPPP@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Most Chromebook’s firmware is Coreboot, but it’s running a Depthcharge payload instead of UEFI (or BIOS or whatever). Mr. Chromebox maintains UEFI Coreboot payloads and install tools for a wide variety of (x86) Chromebooks, which can be used to flash a normal UEFI payload and boot normal OSes. It’s strictly possible to boot normal Linux systems on a the Depthcharge payload modern Chromebooks use, but uh… here’s the gentoo wiki on it, it’s a substantial pain in the ass.

      • gronjo45@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Apologies for the long wait for a response. Been trying to get back to people.

        I checked out the Chromebook I have and made a post on the Gentoo form, but don’t believe I’m able to do it for my particular model because of how I’m sandboxed in a subsystem of something. Could I DM you and we could chat more about sending Chrome OS to the shadow realm?

        • PAPPP@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Sure, drop me a note with the details and I’ll see if I can give you a hand. I’m not super expert in all the specifics of the Chromebook ecosystem, but I have good general computer/Unix skills and have hacked a couple so I know where to look for resources.

          • gronjo45@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Awesome! I’ll send you a DM a bit later with some details about the Chromebook when I dig through the mountain of stuff in front of me. Appreciate the help :)

    • abhibeckert@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      At a guess - they’re likely selling those laptops at a loss and making the money back on (hopefully) service contracts or (probably) selling your data. As soon as you install a custom OS they won’t support you (so you won’t buy support) and they won’t be able to sell your data.

      • gronjo45@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Sorry for the late response, I’ve been wading through my inbox to get back to most :)

        That’s gotta be why they make it so damn hard to uninstall ChromeOS… I like that Linux is being popularized more, but I hear whispers from the F(L)OSS community in my head that Canonical and Microsoft are one in the same. Its a bit confusing some of the rhetoric surrounding certain companies and software other than the blatantly obvious like Microsoft or Google, but I’ll never quite understand programmer “martian”…

        Have you worked on chrome books before and swapped the OS?