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Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

>How is any of this better for consumer freedom than just Windows 7?

Ecosystem. This is a limited function device, which is bad, but anything you can do on it you can also do on a full Linux distribution. Which means that anyone who can get by with such a device will have no barrier to switching if they are ever inclined to do so.

That is the difference from a Windows machine. Because if you have Windows then you start accumulating Windows apps and you become accustomed to their interfaces and your files are in those formats, etc. etc. Windows locks you into Windows. ChromeOS doesn't lock you into ChromeOS; you can switch to a full desktop Linux distribution whenever you want and everything still works.

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Actually I think the limitations on this device are a good thing, AS LONG AS there is the 'developer switch'.

I don't want the normal user to have any kind of root access to their machine - and actually most users don't want it either! With power comes responsibility, and non-tech people don't want responsibility with their laptop - they just want it to work.

As long as there's a switch on the back to drop me to a proper bash prompt, and as long as I can tell whomever I support/recommend this laptop for "don't ever touch this" and it will continue to work for them, this is only a good thing. If you know that the user will never be doing rooty things like installing software, you can put a lot of extra security on a device without compromising the user experience, and the Chromebook does exactly this.

Better security, easier user experience, and as-in-speech freedom is one switch away if you want the responsibility. Honestly, I don't see the down side.

But I could also use just Google Apps on a Windows or Apple machine. Because I use Windows I don't have to buy Windows apps.

Your argument seems to be that "it is better as it doesn't allow me to buy OS-specific apps so I can't get tied in"? I might be misunderstanding.

>Your argument seems to be that "it is better as it doesn't allow me to buy OS-specific apps so I can't get tied in"?

No, that's pretty much it. The problem with Windows is that when the typical user goes to install a piece of software, there is nothing there to make them think "this will cause me great consternation if I ever want to switch operating systems" -- so they don't think that, and they install it, and soon they're thoroughly locked in before they even realize it.

Or to extract out the general principle: It would be best for user freedom if all operating systems used standardized cross-platform APIs and all applications ran on all operating systems.

Which also means that they can switch to a Macbook or a Windows PC whenever they want instead of a Linux machine. How does that help Linux?

First of all, your original question was, "How is any of this better for consumer freedom than just Windows 7?" Being able to easily switch to any OS is obviously better for consumer freedom.

So now you are asking a different question. But are you serious? One of the main barriers to Linux adoption has been the difficulty of switching as a result of lock in. Are you seriously asking how the elimination of that barrier could be good for Linux just because it also eliminates the same barrier for other operating systems?

OK, the default alternative to ChromeOS is that people use Windows. Using ChromeOS does not decrease the switching barrier to using Windows as compared with having used Windows in the first place, it only decreases the switching barrier to using Linux or MacOS. Moreover, MacOS can't be installed on a Chromebook, so there remains the substantial barrier to switching to MacOS of buying a different, much more expensive computer instead of just installing a desktop Linux distribution on the Chromebook.

By this logic most free people are people who don't use computers at all, they have no switching barriers.

>By this logic most free people are people who don't use computers at all, they have no switching barriers.

Is there some reason you expect that conclusion to be an absurdity? Fact: People who have never used a computer are the ones with the most freedom to choose between operating systems, because they have nothing invested in any of them yet.

You seem to be implying that this is somehow not the case. Please elaborate.

Anyone with a computer can switch to no computer at all. But yes, anyone who can't live without their computer is not free. I guess you could say we've sacrifice some freedom for power.

It's the same reason I like having a macbook - I can currently also boot into windows natively or several flavors of unix via virtualization - every os has strengths and weaknesses, why not have them all?

If people can run linux, it helps linux. Even if they only "know" they can run linux. It's mindshare at that level.

People are more likely to try something out if they know they can easily go back to what they're used to.

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