I had a previous gen Asus chromebox, I upgraded the memory to 16GB and installed Ubuntu LTS. I had a novice user in the family, so I just dragged all the icons out of the dock except for the file browser, settings, chrome, and firefox. This allowed things like plugging in a SD card, printing, and emailing photos. The experience was very similar to running Chrome OS.

It was a nice cheap ($180 I believe), quiet, and small desktop that was used for nearly a decade, I think it was purchased in 2014 or so.

Use ChromeOS Flex - it works great. I'm running it on a ChromeBox that was out of support in 2018. Perfect video conference setup.

Yeah my child's Chromebook has this problem. Was a year-old model when bought, now is at AUE date after just 4 years. Still works really well so not sure if we should keep using or not.

Chromebooks tend to use processors that are quite old. So you could buy a new one with something like a Celeron processor that has been around a decade and is EoL.

Intel has put the Celeron brand on all sorts of processors. It's not a very useful indicator of age or in support status.

Regardless, other than when they added Android app support that needs virtualization, I'd be surprised if anything added to Chrome OS since launch requires processor features that weren't present on the first x86/amd64 processors Chrome OS supported.

Chrome device support expiration is only based on device launch date; if someone else launched a device with the same basic hardware three years after yours, it gets three more years of support. If Google is in the middle of replacing the printer support, too bad, your final release can't use the old way or the new way; maybe printing isn't for you, etc.

This is something I've never understood. I would expect Chrome OS to be more like Linux or Windows, with a support cycle dictated by the software (including drivers) not the hardware.

Instead, it's more like Android.

Is it getting security patches? That would be my primary concern since everything it does is web-based.

No security patches after expiration date. Not sure what problem is with lax security for schoolkids, maybe steal homework? https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en

Spear phishing for nudes/taking over the camera when your kid starts exploring porn?

Ed: in general, for a box long enough out of support - just assume there's a zero-interaction exploit for full root - and consider if you want any family member to sit on front of an internet-enabled web cam, with sound, keylogger and screen capture?

You can install your own OS on it, someone else suggested Chrome OS Flex which I guess would get you updates again and Linux or Windows should work too (assuming it’s x86, I don’t know about ARM)

The problem is that the Chrome browser version is also getting out of date, and sooner or later websites are going to malfunction or block you for using an old/insecure Chrome version.

Are those schoolkids' machines connected to the same network as a single adult's?

TBH, it annoys me that they don't at least keep updating the chrome browser. The base OS would be a lot less risky if they'd at least keep Chrome up to date.

I can't imagine a good reason for its expiration to be as short as it is on some of these models.