Original Chromebook Pixel Reaches End of Life (droid-life.com)

Deathlizard writes: The original 2013 Chromebook Pixel, Google's $1200, Core i5 vision of a high end Chromebook, has reached End of Life. Owners are receiving a message that their device is no longer supported.

Comments

Linux

[SumDog]

Time to put something useful on it, like Linux

Re:Linux

[Phylter9086]

I was just thinking of how many computer that I have much older than this that still run the latest Windows, Linux, MacOS. It makes it seem like ChromeOS isn't worth $1200.

Re:Linux

[serviscope_minor]

Time to put something useful on it, like Linux

Quite. This laptop is from 2010. It's previous OSs (ubuntu 9.04 then 12.04) have been EOL'd and I'll reinstall when this OS reaches EOL id the laptop survives that long. It probably will.

It is the duty of all good Citizens

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

It is the duty of all good Citizens to be terrorized by the urge to buy newer, shinier gadgets when your Corporate Masters decide they need another yacht.

Re:It is the duty of all good Citizens

[AmiMoJo]

Some significant percentage of the original Chromebook Pixels were given away for free at Google events or to developers. It was speculated at the time that the sale price didn't include any profit, it was just an at-cost device designed to encourage influential people/devs to take up the platform.

Only Slacker Tech

[rtb61]

Consider a tech product reaching end of life support, mind you not just for upgrades but for bugs and security fixes. So what they are really saying, yeah, we know it has been a whole bunch years and we still haven't got all the bugs out of it and it still sort of mostly works but 'er' fuck off any how and buy another computer that will still mostly work, that contains bugs and security holes and that we will also stop trying to fix in some number of years time. Tech because we don't give a shit if our products don't ever fully function properly and securely as long as you keep paying to much for them. You would think patching and bug fixing should last until they finally make it work 100% but on no, near enough and fuck off and buy another one.

5 years and out?

[layabout]

man, my T430 is older than that (and has more ram, m2 ssd and 1tb ssr (slowly spinning rust). still going strong.

Re:5 years and out?

[Deathlizard]

And that T430 cost just as much, if not cheaper than the pixel.

Back when the Pixel was announced, I posted this. Basically, I said it was unsellable and was "Light money on Fire stupid"

Five years later, that statement still stands. If you bought one of these things, You basically paid $250/Year for a portable web browser. You could have bought a brand new chromebook every year and saved money.

The fact that Google stuck with their five year software support model for a system this expensive that clearly has hardware more than capable enough to support whatever new features come out of ChromeOS is a testament to stay as far away from these high end chromebooks as you can.

EOL after 5 years? Time machine works!!!

[BLToday]

I’m back in the 1990s. First thing, buy as many three letter domains as possible. Then buy as much Apple stock as possible. Oh yeah, tell Clinton to kill bin Laden.

I have Windows laptops that older that still gets OS updates. And until High Sierra, my wife’s ancient 2008 MacBook was still getting the latest version of MacOS. My desktop is almost that old and it’s perfectly functional.

Remember when it was "ATARI 2600 reaches End of Li

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. Because once upon a time it was considered impressive to build formidable products, and it was a disgrace when they failed early. Now people pay extra just to rent some already-doomed piece of equipment.

Disgusting.

Five Years??

[filesiteguy]

Wow, that's pathetic. I just retired the last of my XP machines from 2005/6 a few years ago, and my Win 7 machines are humming along nicely.

If they want to be taken seriously, they need a longer support cycle. Up until now, I thought they had a great ecosystem. My son uses Chromebooks at his school, and everything there is cloud based.

But, five years??

Re:Five Years??

[itsme1234]

You XP machine hasn't been getting automatic updates for 9 years now.

That is absolute bullshit. In 2009 they were still making new machines (completely new models) with/for XP like the legendary 9.5 hours EEE Pc 1000HE (yes, the battery is still pretty strong). XP got updates until 2014 and this can be trivially (one registry key) extended to 2019 (yes, they are still pushing updates for XP). Even without the registry "hack" Microsot still patched all XPs with the mega-emergency KB4012598 - that was last year, yes 2017.

Re:Five Years??

[filesiteguy]

The XP machines were supported until April 8, 2014. After that we had two years extended support. I got rid of 900 of them in 2016. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=Microsoft%20Windows%20XP%20Service%20Pack%202

Expensive paperweight.

[renegadesx]

Buying a new phone every 4 or 5 years make sense, new tower frequencies in your area, new features but even now that is becoming less and less necessary. 5g will be the next time a new phone is necessary. This however is a joke.
The Pixel was not even a cheap machine, why anyone would pay that much for a Chromebook is beyond me, the entire point of Chromebook's were that it was so lightweight that it could run on ultra-cheap hardware.
Now 5 years later it's an expensive paperweight? Has anyone got Manjaro running on one of these?

Re:Expensive paperweight.

[viperidaenz]

Many flavours of Linux run on it.
Here's the latest Ubuntu https://www.servethehome.com/g...

Not only is the bootloader unlockable, it's also opensource.
You're not restricted in any way with what you can do with the hardware. You just won't get any more automatic Chrome OS updates.
coreboot source: https://chromium.googlesource....
uboot source: https://chromium.googlesource....

Name another laptop manufacturer with entirely open source boot code.

Re:Expensive paperweight.

[Mal-2]

So do Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, so long as you flash the firmware.

If you're worried your Pixel is a paperweight, I'll trade you a pre-flashed Acer C720 for it.

Re:Expensive paperweight.

[AmiMoJo]

It runs Linux well because Linus bought one back in the day and fixed all the issues with it.

Devolution

[WaffleMonster]

If Google were responsible it would provide instructions and make it easy to install Windows or Linux instead of telling it's users to fuck off. Nothing even remotely obsolete about an i5 laptop. Expecting people to just throw away perfectly fine hardware is sleazy.

Years ago I could almost buy argument why chefs were needed to bake roms for specific devices due to severe resource constraints. Today there are no credible excuses. It's absurd this nonsense is allowed to continue. Worse the problem appears to be growing into PC space where "security" is wielded as an excuse to fuck over / scare end users.

Re:Devolution

[viperidaenz]

Windows, no, why would you want to install Windows on a 32GB SSD?
Linux, yes.
Friendly guide: https://www.servethehome.com/g...
Google instructions: https://www.chromium.org/a/chr...

Re:Devolution

[WaffleMonster]

Windows, no, why would you want to install Windows on a 32GB SSD?
Linux, yes.

It's not about me. Wouldn't go anywhere near a chromebook in the first place.

Re:Devolution

[Mal-2]

Windows has to be shoehorned into a 16 GB SSD with extreme difficulty, and there won't be enough space to download updates so it becomes unmanageable pretty quickly, but 32 GB is enough. Add a fast SD card and/or a Samsung Fit drive (I can't recommend the SanDisk Fit, it overheats and disconnects when writing for more than fifteen seconds or so) for data and application installation, and you'll be set.

Re:Devolution

[sensei moreh]

No overheating problem with a 64 GB SanDisk Ultra Fit on my HP Stream 11. It gets warm, but definitely not hot. And it doesn't seem to be any slower than the internal eMMC.

Re:Devolution

[drinkypoo]

Add a fast SD card and/or a Samsung Fit drive (I can't recommend the SanDisk Fit, it overheats and disconnects when writing for more than fifteen seconds or so) for data and application installation, and you'll be set.

What you want is a Samsung Evo+, they have the best random read performance. Sandisk devices tend to have garbage random read performance. Yes, random READ performance, garbage, on a flash drive. I don't know how they managed that either, but I've done the benchmarking, and I know it's true. It made a dramatic difference on my Pine64+.

Re:Devolution

[viperidaenz]

A 32GB Asus Transformer barely fits Windows 10 and a few kids games on it.
It was extremely painful to install the Creators Update, as there wasn't enough free space.

Re:Devolution

[viperidaenz]

You should be fine with any A1 rated SD card.

Re:Devolution

[Mal-2]

The reason I recommend the Fit is its physical size. It's small enough that you never have to remove it unless you need that USB 3 port for something else (hopefully a hub). Anything larger has to be removed when putting the laptop in a bag for travel, and risks catching it on something the rest of the time. To me, any flash drive that can't be left in all the time without exposure to damage is for sneakernet and cold storage only.

Re:Devolution

[Mal-2]

I ordered one (though 128 GB) and experienced the connect/disconnect problem immediately. It appears to affect about 50% of them, and I didn't want to roll the dice over a few dollars of difference in price, so I went with the Samsung Fit the second time around. The Samsung proved to be slightly faster in every way: 150+ MB/s sequential reads, sequential writes vary by the amount of power the host is willing to throw at them but it's about 45 MB/s on the Chromebook, and 130 MB/s on the desktop which will happily give it all the current it wants. Holy shit does it get hot when doing sustained 130 MB/s writes, but it doesn't disconnect when it takes cooldown breaks the way the SanDisk does. It just slows to almost zero speed for a second or two.

soon to be illegal in Europe

[astrofurter]

It looks like our friends in Europe will soon make illegal the wasteful, environmentally irresponsible, & abusive practice of planned obsolescence.

Alas, our Congress finds lawful bribery far too lucrative to be bothered with protecting the people or from abusive corporations.

Re:Google should unlock the bootloader.

[viperidaenz]

It's not locked, so they can't unlock it. You just need to boot into developer mode and turn off OS verification.

They also tell you how to install Linux
https://www.chromium.org/a/chr...

Here's an guide to install Ubuntu 18
https://www.servethehome.com/g...

Open source not much better

[xack]

Look how many Linux distros are dropping 32bit support for example. People just want the latest shiny thing while perfectly functioning machines get trashed.

Re:Open source not much better

[Bert64]

It makes sense for mainstream distros to drop 32bit, especially the main server distros as there are few if any 32bit machines still being built.

Support for 64bit on linux is very mature, and the open source nature of the vast majority of applications means that everything has long ago been recompiled so you're not stuck with legacy 32bit binaries.

32bit should be relegated to embedded and legacy niches.

Re:Open source not much better

[serviscope_minor]

Open source not much better

No, Open Source really is much better.

Look how many Linux distros are dropping 32bit support for example.

This is one of those things that qualifies as "not even wrong".

Firstly 32 bit hardware is getting increasingly rare, and for general desktop, laptop and server use the 32 bit processors were discontinued way way before 2013.

Secondly, unbuntu no longer provides a desktop 32 bit x86 image for ubuntu 18.04, though you can install it. So your 32 bit processor will be supported through t0 2023 for that OS.

Arch has discontinued 32 bit x86 support, but because it's OSS, the Arch32 project lives on.

Fedora has no 32 bit server images, but they're a business oriented distro and I doubt you'll find anyone running 32 bit x86 servers. It's a financially bad idea.

Debian still support it with no plans for EOL.

And a whole bunch of more obscure ones.

And 32 bit ARM continues to be supported too.

Re:Google should unlock the bootloader.

[Mal-2]

You also have to take off the back and remove the write protect screw if you want to use MrChromebox's UEFI firmware (which you really should).

Fine

[DaMattster]

If Google is going to turn it into abandonware, they should provide software to unlock it and allow people to run whatever operating system they can get to install and run on it.