Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alexnklein 2156 days ago
Think it's a shame that such a privacy-last and openness-last machine as the Chromebook is the "standard" for kids and classrooms.

Windows isn't perfect, but it has the broadest ecosystem of applications in the world, and is far more manipulable than Chrome or iOS. Far more.

2 comments

> Think it's a shame that [...] the Chromebook is the "standard" for kids and classrooms.

Chromebooks are cheap to buy and maintain, that's why they are in classrooms.

Whatever the $OS, we don't #teach# privacy. In fact, privacy and critical thinking are the subjects that we teach #worse# than math.

Although Chromebooks are GOOGware, you can make them better by switching to dev mode and installing SeaBIOS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaBIOS). I boot Debian Linux on a CB with premium hardware. Cheapest "ultrabook" that you get, and with Firefox DoH and ESNI, you bleed less into the surveillance system.

The openness of Windows is why it’s not suitable for school environments or even many professional environments. ChromeOS is hard to break, and even if you did, it’s a 5 minute process to restore it to a workable state.

With that said, I hope that future tinkerers find a way to get their hands on Windows or Mac computers at home or in computer literacy labs.