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Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin
(www.mercurynews.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Technology
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This sounds like there's a market for a Linux distro that behaves like ChromeOS and can be centrally managed.
The problem comes down to education institutions. I remember when we got Chromebooks in my highschool (8 years ago) admins forgot to turn of developer mode and half the school unenrolled the Chromebook managing to bypass all restrictions. This went on for half a year until one day our school needed to run a state exam (more for measure of schools performance not as a college entrance exam or anything).
The computerized testing program required deploying a specific chrome app accessible when chrome book is logged out (can't just download from chrome web store). When they tried to push the client since half of Chromebooks were unenrolled it failed. This required the school it to recall pretty much all chrome books to manually re enroll all of them and disable developer mode (prevents unenrolling and prevents sideloading Linux).
Problem is if older Chromebooks are used for Linux in an educational environment there would be nothing stopping a student from whipping up a bootable USB and dumping another distro (bypassing restrictions). I'm also not sure if there is a enrollment mode equivalent Linux (there may be but not sure).
At least that's my two cents (not a school it admin just a memory from the past 😉).
I never really understood the need for that strickt controll of the hardware... Who cares if Linux is sideloaded or if students unenroll. Imho I think if you need that strickt controll you are bound to get so many unnesseary issues down the line. Instead let student 6se what ever the fuck they want and for security just make sure they WiFi/ethernet is secure and locked down and any services the students need are behind a secure 2fa login. Treat any device as untrusted is more healthy for your security in the long run imo. If students need special software that they can't run on their own machines you can lend them a machine for that specific task for a specific time. Problem solved.
It's because the school district is responsible for how the devices are used. If your kid gets around the content block and you, an ultraconservative, finds your kid watching porn, you are definitely going to do something about it.
And of course blame the school instead of the child at fault, naturally...
You blame the school instead of your parenting which is at fault*
Usually kids "misbehave" in public because of close-minded parents or parents who try to control their kid too much, and most of all parents who don't encourage good behaviour correctly. Parents really like to blame their kid for behavioural issues when in reality they're the reason it's a problem. (Especially with e.g. people who have disabilities like Bipolar, Autism, ADHD, parents internally blame their kid for everything and punish the kid, even though the disturbances caused by the disorders are something you can address and help the kid with with good parenting)
I suspect most of the kids who do that kind of stuff are neurodivergent and either undiagnosed or not treated correctly by their parents and not given proper treatment
Don't disagree at all, was just making a topical comment, not trying to do a deep dive
No way it's the schools fault if the kid sidloads anothe os. That should strip the responsibility and it's the parents problem. Ultraconservatives can just stfu. about this.
It should, yes. But that’s not going to stop them from trying. Enough noise from a “concerned parent” will make something happen more often than not.
This is why we can't have nice things
Federal laws and rules for educational technology:
CIPPA - https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/childrens-internet-protection-act
COPPA - https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa
and to an extent
FERPA - https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
Actually in your case our school has a BYOD program (bring your own device) in which you can bring your own laptop with whatever flavor of OS. Firewall would restrict you, your device would be considered untrusted, and in testing a loaner locked down chromebook would be provided. The issue comes with non BYOD devices.
Now lets assume a school has 1k students. If they allowed os unlocking and allowed students to tinker with the os. Then they would need 2k chromebooks 1k unlockable 1k locked down for exam administration (assume the whole school needs to take it at the same time). From a admin/IT perspective why should the school need to pay double the number of chrome books just for a few students to install their favorite brand of linux.
Even under the best circumstances where support queries aren't increased (from students softbricking/ not knowing how to use linux) and say they are able to preserve 1k unlockable chromebooks, admins would still need to replace the other 1k locked down chrome books at end of software to stay in compliance with testing software (negating any financial benefit).
They could just disable booting from USB drives in the bios and password protect it. They could install something like Fedora Silverblue, or even customize the image used to include whatever modifications they want. Any changes they made to the image would be propagated through autoupdates. Kids wouldn't have root, so they couldn't forcibly install a different OS. Of course they could install flatpaks to their home directory, which is probably something administrators would want to prevent, but a knowledgeable student can always find ways to do what they want.
This of course requires schools/districts to hire people to manage that stuff, which could be a problem.
Good point. I wasn't sure if Chromebooks had a normal bios with password protect/option to disable USB boot for non chrom os operating systems.