this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Which consumer desktop Linux distros have more than 10 years of updates?
All of them!
Linux and Linux distros are generally designed to be hardware-agnostic, and generally works just fine on very old components. I'm currently running the current version of Ubuntu on a used U1 server from ~2013, no issues, no headaches. It just works. Grab any Windows PC from the last 20 years, you won't have any compatibility issues running most Linux distros, though some distros might expect more performance. Linux Mint is fairly lightweight.
And you can install those distros on a Chromebook, no? You can probably use CloudReady after ChromeOS no longer supports it after 10 years.
Debian LTS for stable releases is 5 years
https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
Ubuntu LTS is 5 years
https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
Fedora is 13 months
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/lifecycle/
LTS just means staying on the same release and guaranteed support for that time which is important for businesses. As a consumer you can always just do a release upgrade.
Since most businesses rely on Windows anyway, that's pretty much irrelevant for this discussion. They cannot use Chromebooks either.
The original assertion was that a Chromebook becomes useless ewaste when the software updates stop. But as of today Chromeos gets software updates for longer than any Linux distro major release (10 years ChromeOS vs 5 years for Linux). You can install Linux on that Chromebook after Google stops supporting it just the same as the Windows laptop after Dell stops supporting it. And there's CloudReady and Chromium. Theyre not ewaste without Google updates, you have options.
Linux receives updates forever. The point of LTS kernels is not to stay on them forever but to have to do less testing. It's not very likely that upgrading kernels will break something but it can happen so businesses can stay on LTS kernels and continue to get critical security fixes and they'll only have to update and test once a new LTS kernel comes out. The average person should use the regular kernel and that's also the default on pretty much all distros
Comparing ChromeOS updates to LTS kernel updates makes no sense, especially since the LTS kernel can just be updated to a newer version if that specific version doesn't get updated anymore.
But contrary to Linux or even Windows (unless they pull some hardware requirement shit again) you need to switch to another OS and not simply do a release upgrade.
You aren't understanding.
That's support for one specific software release.
It'd be like saying Apple supports iPhones for 1 year not 5+ years, because they're only on iOS version X for one year.
Linux devices get updates literally forever.
All of them.
Debian has been around for 30 years. And on my non-Chromebook I can always install the latest version.
Debian LTS for stable release is 5 years
https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
And when that support period ends... I just install the next Debian release.
When the support period for ChromeOS ends, I'm "officially" out of luck.
I have a 13 year old laptop that runs current Linux distros without a problem.
You can install Linux on that old Chromebook, same as you can today. I think also CloudReady could be used. Or Chromium is open source so that custom buildsay be feasible just like with custom Android ROMs.
Or I could just... buy a laptop that doesn't have an expiration date.
Yup. My point is simply that with the latest announced support cycle ChromeOS has a longer support cycle than any single Linux distro LTS release I know of, and even when out of support a Chromebook isn't automatically an ewaste paperweight.
But you're comparing apples and oranges. With a Chromebook, the OS is being updated to a new version every month. You're comparing a device being able to support a certain number of versions of an OS to an OS receiving application and security updates. It's a meaningless comparison because a typical laptop running Linux can be upgraded to an arbitrary number of new versions of any Linux distribution.
I just recently installed the latest version of Manjaro on a Dell XPS 15z from 2011. So Manjaro supports hardware from at least 12 years ago.
Nice. I believe I can put ChromeOS Flex (forgot about the name change from CloudReady in my other comments) on my old Surface Pro 3. Or Fedora. Or keep running Windows. And when my HP 14c stops getting updates from Google in 2030 or 2031, I'll consider Linux or Flex on it. 😁
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-oldest-linux-distro-just-got-a-major-update/
1993s slackware
Slackware 1.0 isn't still receiving updates though. There doesn't seem to be a statement on how long major releases are supported, it just says "a number of years."
https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:faq
Why do you compare patches for major software releases with updates for hardware? Those are completely different topics.
I'm comparing ChromeOS software updates to Linux distro major release support lifecycles. The original assertion was that a Chromebook becomes useless ewaste once the software updates stop.
I'm running Arch Linux in a 18 year old laptop. And I could and have run Debian in the very same laptop in the past.
I don't get your point at all. If laptops were as repairable as desktops, we could continue using them for 15+ years. And software support, thanks to the GNU/Linux distro maintainers, is not a problem.
This is an apples to oranges (or OS to hardware) comparison.
Lots of GNU/Linux distros have been receiving updates for decades now, although major releases do sometimes drop support for some hardware (typically an entire CPU architecture).
I don't think ChromeOS is saying they'll provide security updates for a 10 year old OS release (though maybe they are? but that wouldn't be very attractive to most people), rather they're saying "ChromeOS devices receive 10 years of updates.**" (with the ** being "For devices prior to 2021 that will receive extended updates, some features and services might not be supported.")
And of course, yes, many other distros current releases today do have excellent support for hardware that is a lot more than 10 years old.
I have a CR48 from 2010 that is running arch linux, is slow but completely workable.
Brilliant! So you're affirming it wasn't automatically ewaste once Google stopped supporting it!