[tytso]

The Acer C720 used a 3.8 Linux kernel, as documented at [1]. Updating to a new kernel would have required a full QA of the hardware to make sure that the device drivers in a newer kernel still worked correctly with that hardware.

[1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f...

Support costs aren't too bad so long as you don't have to update the kernel and requal everything. But newer userspace starts to use kernel features to provide better functionality and better security (consider the massive vulnerabilities associated with Spectre and Meltdown, and obviously none of the remediations would have been in the 3.8 kernels). So you have to consider the costs of doing a requal of all of the hardware platforms using a 3.8 kernel to something newer, versus the costs of continuing to backport security fixes to older kernels, and the costs of testing the userspace components against older kernel, and providing workarounds for the lack of features in newer kernels.

A six year support lifetime is a long time; and Windows 10 has also stopped supporting older laptops on newer releases, so you will also see Microsoft not providing updates to older hardware[2][3].

[2] https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/3600086427...

[3] https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-very-w...

[pjmlp]

The Asus laptop I got in 2009 with Windows 7, has gone through all Windows updates, is now using the very latest Windows 10 version.

[pgeorgi]

And it's great if that works. If it doesn't, you have no recourse, even if the device is only just over 2 years old (or whatever your country's mandated warranty period is).

As happened for my HP laptop whose firmware put the GPU in some high performance state, expecting the Windows driver to clock down as appropriate.

Sadly, Windows upgrades (7->8, 8->10, all the 6month updates to 10 except for the October 2019 one) are "full installs" that run in what is essentially Windows' "safe boot" mode with stock drivers, so there was no clock down.

The result was that I could only update the laptop outdoors in winter when it was freezing, otherwise the laptop powered off mid-upgrade because it ran too hot (which then leads to the upgrade being rolled back, repeat ad nauseum).

Compared to that, the 5-8 years of Chrome OS support cover a really long time (the upgrade path and new OS version are actually tested on the very model I'm running), but it's a trade-off: If you're lucky about the configuration and what newer Windows versions expect, a Windows laptop can be usable for 15 years, but there's definitely luck involved (even though I guess Microsoft is also doing some rather arcane testing on their own, but things slip through and they certainly don't provide any guarantees for what's essentially third-party hardware).

[jasonjayr]

That is equal parts mortifying and impressive that you diagnosed the root cause and were able to work around it.

I thought windows update failing because an unsupported, never-installed unrelated installer for Netware was in some custom-named obscure backup directory buried 4 levels deep was impressive.

[pgrote]

>The Acer C720 used a 3.8 Linux kernel, as documented at [1]. Updating to a new kernel would have required a full QA of the hardware to make sure that the device drivers in a newer kernel still worked correctly with that hardware.

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

[iamnothere]

It would be nice if there was an unsupported (but still Google-distributed) "community" channel you could switch to on old hardware. Like how you can change to beta or developer channels if you want to test the new versions. This would be something that prosumers could use, if not the mass public. I feel like having the hardware simply "expire" when it is still functional probably results in a lot of e-waste.

You can install something like Gallium if you have the patience, time, and skill, but not everybody does.

[nelgaard]

That is exactly what I do not like about systems such a Chrome OS and Windows. I want the choice about upgrading the kernel. The Linux kernel is quite good about not breaking user-space applications.

I have an Acer C720 that have been running Linux for 5 years. Now it has Debian with a 5.4.0 kernel and it works just fine.

In the beginning it was running Ubuntu which also worked fine. I got it because the SSD died a year ago, but I run Linux from an SD-card.