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Comment by thinkingemote | Hacker News Reader

Could installing xubuntu be an alternative? What benefits do neverware have over installing a light weight Ubuntu repo?

No. Organizations who are using this to revive old hardware do this because it integrates with ... their ChromeOS installed base. Central management, unified app deployment etc.

Also the big one, atomic and transparent updates and upgrades. I love Ubuntu (and worked there for a long time!), but no way I'm giving a mutable OS to someone unless I expect to be their sysadmin. They're one google search away from a broken computer, they can't really break chromeOS.

Seriously, the amount of time I needed to assist my relatives since they switched to ChromeOS became almost null.

They don't play AAA games, they don't really do administrative work (and the times they do, Google Drive can help), and they can't really break it even if they tried.

> they can't really break chromeOS

You'd be surprised.

They can (and will):

- install crapware extensions

- allow notifications from random shady sites, which will then make them install more crapware extensions

- change their default search engine (and a lot of data that Chrome sends goes to the default search engine, e.g. keystrokes in the address bar)

It doesn't break the OS per se, but it still results in "my computer has a virus" support calls.

I assume those can be locked down in an education/corporate environment.

Yes, it's a problem mainly if you set up a chromebook for a relative, outside of a managed environment.

It's a little easier to use and easier to manage for most people compared to a traditional Linux distro.

Isn't this only because ChromeOS doesn't do anything. xubuntu would be just as easy to use if you confined yourself to a web browser and only used web apps too.

Different user groups. If you’re savvy enough to know about Xububtu as an option, then you don’t really need Neverware. The issue is for those that can’t or won’t use a Nix, but might find a ChromeOS palatable.

Why install Ubuntu when you could install the vastly superior Arch Linux?

Because not everyone wants to live on the bleeding edge. Because typing ‘pacman -Syu’ 7 times a week gets annoying. Because you want to use the apt/.deb package ecosystem. Because Ubuntu is easier to install, and doesn’t require you to make a huge number of choices about what packages to install. Because you want to use Proton, Lutris and Steam without needing to patch things. Because most $BIGCORP orgs don’t realize that there are ecosystems besides .deb and .rpm. Because Ubuntu is what you already know.

Don’t get me wrong: I am a big fan of Arch, but there are a lot of reasons to not prefer it over Ubuntu.

> Because not everyone wants to live on the bleeding edge. Because typing ‘pacman -Syu’ 7 times a week gets annoying.

I think I can solve both of those with one stone..!

Is it irony, then, that ChromeOS is based on Gentoo? :v

Not really; Gentoo isn't "bleeding edge" the way arch is (unless you explicitly configure it that way), and Google builds it into a "final product" that's ready-to-use without configuring.

ChromeOS isn't based on Gentoo at all. They might share some underlying code. But they're not related at all.

More than just underlying code; it's directly based on Gentoo and it uses Portage. See the first line of the Wikipedia article on Chrome OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS

That's not what I meant. Sure, underneath it shared tech. But when people think of Gentoo, they think 'build from source' and get every kernel dot release etc.. ChromeOS isn't related in that sense.

As someone who started w/ Ubuntu, distro-hopped around for 6 years of my childhood, and has for the past 4 years used Arch: Linux describes a spectrum of experiences, and .DEB-based systems are the soda and potato chips of the gourmet linux feast. Fedora is a sandwich, Manjaro might be steak. Arch is kind of an empty kitchen with a ton of stuff in it, and Gentoo is a legendary chef on top of a mountain someplace.

tl;dr - it's fine to snack on potato chips, but don't expect people to all want to eat the same thing. Variety is powerful.

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