Love them or hate them, the current Chromebook market allows schools to afford to put a computing device in every student’s hands.

A close second reason is that managing ChromeOS devices is pretty easy and doesn’t require highly-trained people.

To crack the market, you’ll need dirt cheap hardware and dirt cheap and easy management. Doesn’t sound too profitable.

But yes, stuff gets thrown away way before the hardware goes obsolete, due to the limited ChromeOS lifecycle.

Not a lot of schools are going to spend much time trying to get Windows or Linux going because that requires more FTE money than just discarding and buying a new Chromebook. I know this from experience (n= US state level)