Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols insults everyone in this article, except for Google, Chromebook users, and Chrome OS. He used to write some good articles, but over the past few years his articles seem to have a ‘Feel‘ of desperation about them.

Why I love my Chromebook: Reason 1, it’s a Linux desktop:

So why is it as I sit at Kubecon North America in Detroit that I’m writing this on an HP Chromebook x360?

Simple, because Chrome OS is a Linux distro. Always has been; always will be.

Now this annoys the heck out of some Linux fans. Their vision of the Linux desktop future has everyone running Ubuntu – no Fedora! – or Arch Linux – please, Linux Mint for the win! – or MX Linux – get real! Use openSUSE Tumbleweed! – and on and on. There are over a thousand Linux distros, which is a big reason we’ll never see their dream of the Linux desktop wiping out Windows come true.

Microsoft also has a Linux Distro, it’s the CBL-Mariner.

Linus Torvalds has also stated that “Chromebooks and Android” are Linux desktop OSes: ‘I still wish we were better at having a standardize desktop that goes across all the distributions … It’s more of a personal annoyance how the fragmentation of the different vendors have, I think, held the desktop back a bit … It seems to be that Chromebooks and Android are the paths towards the desktop.‘

Next, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols gives a ‘Free Pass‘ to the Chromebook Auto Update Expiration (AUE) date problem:

True, their Auto Update Expiration (AUE) dates are now history, so I can’t get automatic updates anymore. But, so what? Even Google admits you can keep using them after their average five-year expiration date.

‘But, so what?‘ Maybe that Chromebook sat in stock for four years, and you just purchased it for your seven year old daughter, as her first laptop computer, then a year later the security updates end. Maybe parents don’t want their children using a computer that has stopped getting security updates.

Then, he says:

Besides, Google and its partners are also now extending AUEs. For example, March 2022‘s Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 has an AUE of June 2028.

WOW!!! Some Chromebook OEMs have added ONE year to the normal Auto Update Expiration (AUE) date of five years. All excuses for him using Chromebooks “that are seven years old” and running without any security updates for two years. Great advice Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols…NOT!!!

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols believes that hackers don’t bother wid Chromebooks because they are too busy looking for Windows 7 computers that don’t have the “Extended Security Update (ESU) contract.”

  • Google must also pay him a little extra money for any articles he writes that praise ‘Them & Theirs‘.

I tested Chromebooks not too long ago – see the Chromebooks page – didn’t care for them, and found it difficult to even give them away when I had finished the tests.

LINUX IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES – you never know what you’re gonna get!

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