A disturbing change in Windows could have Linux complications.

[Martin Roth]

Ironically, Chromebooks are some of the most open laptops available for people with a little technical knowledge. The philosophy of the group who started the chromebook team at google was that if you own the device, you should be able to do anything you want with it. Unlike other companies which feel that security means protection *FROM* the user, the original idea was specifically protection *FOR* the user. Unfortunately it was a different Google back then.


This means, that unlike most recent X86 devices, you're absolutely free to install your own firmware onto the device. There's no key written into the processor that prevents you from flashing something different onto the board.

If you have a chromebook and want to run linux or even windows on it, Google doesn't really support it, but they also don't (or haven't up to this point), prevent you from doing just that.

Here's a site with alternative open-source firmware that can be loaded onto a chromebook to boot directly to whatever linux distribution you'd like.
https://mrchromebox.tech/

Yes, unfortunately the modern X86 chromebooks are still going to have the Intel ME and AMD's PSP on the recent processors, so it's not all roses, but It's a step in what I think is a positive direction.
Martin


Jun 30, 2023, 08:50 by bsturgill at ataman.com:

>
> Basically, Microsoft is working on taking Windows to a more Chromebook-like platform.
> Chromebooks cannot really be freely booted, and Windows machines would likely
> be the same.
> https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/27/23775117/microsoft-windows-11-cloud-consumer-strategy
> --
>
> Brian
>
>