The onboard memory is small, the models I got my hands on have 16GB of onboard eMMC storage. Keeping the ChromeOS on there allows for someone to just quickly use the machine. So I want to maintain the ability for a nontechnical person to pick one of these up and just use it as a client. With that being said, not everyone will be familiar with or able to operate a Linux install, let alone be a server admin. This network will be not only for normal times, but also for emergencies. ![]() These machines are going to be used to help build an autonomous wireless community network. So why did I choose to boot to an external drive while keeping the original ChromeOS? Do whatever you want, modify things to how you want them to be. While this project is for a specific purpose, keep in mind that you don’t have to go this route. There are many factors and reasons why I went this route, and some considerations to keep in mind. This tutorial will be specifically for installing Ubuntu onto an external drive, and being able to tinker with a Chromebook to allow it to boot to that drive while maintaining the original ChromeOS. The other part of this article will go into the reasonings behind this, and talk more about planned obsolecnece, computers, capitalism, permacomputing, and post-scarcity anti-capitalist futures. The first is an actual tutorial on how to make a Chromebook boot to an up to date Linux install. This article is broken up into two parts. These computers could become free computers for low-income families or people who just need a new computer to do work in our ever-evolving digital world. All of these resources and work are discarded. The rare earth minerals, the labor involved typically in the global south being carried out by an exploited labor force, the resources used to transport these materials, and the fossil fuels used in their mining, transport, development, and manufacturing. These complex machines are meant to be thrown away, tossed aside, and scraped. The history of the Chromebook is a history of planned obsolescence, a perfect example of how computing operates within capitalism - to maximize profit at the expense of all else. It’s because Google wants to increase sales, and so after a few years they intentionally strand thousands of machines. Is it because the hardware is broken or obsolete? No. ![]() ![]() Laptops from 2018 are thrown away, scrapped, or auctioned off because they no longer will work. What happens to the thousands of Chromebooks in schools after a few years pass? They end up in an end-of-life (EOL) state, unable to receive updates from Google. Made by Google, the entire OS mainly acts as a web browser to access Google’s cloud resources (Google docs, sheets, etc). They are small, cheap, and efficient laptops usually given out to students to do their work. Chromebooks are a ubiquitous staple mostly in educational spaces.
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