Chrome has recently started really driving folks to upstream their drivers to Linux.
But many of these Chromebooks are from a before-time, when it was more traditional vendor development models.
Aka a huge gnarly vendor ask code drop. That may or may not matter be replaced by a other similar or quite different code drop. This is how wireless routers mostly exist today. Most embedded devices. Alas. Because it's utterly unsupportable over time. There's huge piles of hacks to get Chrome, the thing running the OS, going. And the new platform sdk changes everything around and introduced new issues and it's just a mess.
Now though, two things are happening. A lot a lot a lot more devices have Linux kernel mainstream support. So the kernel should support these devices basically forever-more, which is a huge change.
ChromeOS is also a moving target with a shifting sea of services & standards & expectations. Just a thin client maybe the end goal but there's basically a pretty complex featureful desktop, and with cause really. There's real burden upgrading a device to support newer ChromeOS, to keeping up.
The good news here is that ChromeOS is decoupling chrome the browser from Chrome the OS. So users may be stuck on an old ChromeOS desktop perhaps, ut they can keep upgrading Chrome the browser, which should expand effective lifetime a lot. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36977107
Albeit the question exists of how long hardware/desktop support will last. I spoke to how mainline drivers should make the task much easier. But whether companies actually do support their hardware beyond the current short lifespan or not is unknown, is anyone's guess.
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Chrome has recently started really driving folks to upstream their drivers to Linux.
But many of these Chromebooks are from a before-time, when it was more traditional vendor development models.
Aka a huge gnarly vendor ask code drop. That may or may not matter be replaced by a other similar or quite different code drop. This is how wireless routers mostly exist today. Most embedded devices. Alas. Because it's utterly unsupportable over time. There's huge piles of hacks to get Chrome, the thing running the OS, going. And the new platform sdk changes everything around and introduced new issues and it's just a mess.
Now though, two things are happening. A lot a lot a lot more devices have Linux kernel mainstream support. So the kernel should support these devices basically forever-more, which is a huge change.
ChromeOS is also a moving target with a shifting sea of services & standards & expectations. Just a thin client maybe the end goal but there's basically a pretty complex featureful desktop, and with cause really. There's real burden upgrading a device to support newer ChromeOS, to keeping up.
The good news here is that ChromeOS is decoupling chrome the browser from Chrome the OS. So users may be stuck on an old ChromeOS desktop perhaps, ut they can keep upgrading Chrome the browser, which should expand effective lifetime a lot. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36977107
Albeit the question exists of how long hardware/desktop support will last. I spoke to how mainline drivers should make the task much easier. But whether companies actually do support their hardware beyond the current short lifespan or not is unknown, is anyone's guess.