this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Which is good in the short term and bad in the long term imo.
It's good because it gives Microsoft and Apple competition, so they'll be forced to adapt to these users who have found that they don't need the desktop app stuff. More services will move to the cloud (like Office), which means less vendor lockin for client devices.
In the longer term, it means more stuff is in the cloud, which means less individual control over their data. That means vendor lockin must shifts from client devices to services, but now you can't just use a compatibility layer like WINE if you want to switch. So we'll then play a cat and mouse game with regulations like the GDPR as companies innovate new ways to screw you over.
So yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about Chromebooks. I'm personally teaching my kids to use Linux (if they want to play games, they use my Linux machines), so hopefully there's enough people pushing against everything going to the cloud to maintain some amount of competition to keep them in check.
I think I generally agree with all that. One good side effect is I think this will be the push that gets Linux a bit more mainstream*. It's pretty easy to sideload Linux onto most Chromebooks, so I think a good chunk of kids that like tinkering with stuff are going to try it out, more so than the past. ChromeOS is a lot more restrictive than windows, so there's a bigger incentive to get around it.
Yeah, same. But then again, if Linux really did a push to appeal to the mainstream, it would probably lose what I like most and it. That's basically what ChromeOS is (bundling popular, proprietary nonsense), and I'm not a fan.