[liberationtech] Chromebooks for Risky Situations?

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micah anderson:
> 
> I can't wait for the day when Google accidentally pushes an update
> out that actually bricks their devices, because when that happens,
> there is no way to "simply reinstall the OS from scratch". -- 
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> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
> 

Funny you should mention that. I have a Galaxy Nexus and I accepted an
OTA update 4.2 or 4.2.1 I forget. Anyway that particular device had
file system encryption enabled. After the update it was in a permanent
reboot loop and I had to re-flash the entire device with the stock ROM.

Fortunately I'd backed up my data with Titanium Backup so restoration
was easy.

Another handset I have also a Galaxy Nexus without encryption upgraded
properly without any issues. Likewise with a Nexus 7 I also own. Maybe
this was an example of a Google update going awry.

I do agree though Ubuntu wouldn't be the best solution (although I do
use Kubuntu on my workstation). I know my way around Linux, and it's
not mission critical. If it screwed up I'd have time to fix it, others
in hot areas trying to do a news report might not. :)

The other thing is Unity is distribution specific, Ubuntu's packages
are based off Debian testing/unstable. This is actually one of the
reasons I like KDE very much because they haven't aligned themselves
with a linux provider. In my opinion it also contains the right amount
of ease of use and reconfigurability to remain useful, unlike some
other environments aimed at being "easy to use".

For stable desktop usage something like CentOS or Debian stable would
probably be better. That said hardening those systems does take some
knowledge of Linux. I guess if you really wanted to use Ubuntu, you'd
have to stick to LTS releases those tend to be a fair bit more
conservative.

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