Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin

Issue is that Chromebooks have "googled" UEFIs specifically meant to lock down the system, and the Chrome OS boot directory is even on ROM, so it's super difficult to actually get rid of Chrome OS for another operating system. I also imagine you can't just boot a "regular" full featured Linux distro on it without, like they said, a ton of work.

If you can get mainstream Linux working, then yes it should satisfy the vast majority of students, but as far as I know you need highly specialized distros specifically designed to circumvent the hardware lockouts, which are rather niche and don't get the same level of development as a mainstream distro.

you think school districts pay their IT departments enough to deal with that shit? If they even have one, at least here in Texas a lot of schools just hire random dudes to come in every so often