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georgeecollins | on: “This is not the computer for you”
I second that! This is also how I feel about Raspberry Pis. There's so much they can't do, and yet in a way they can do everything. It's not the power of the machine, its about how much control you have or how close you can get to the metal. At least that way you learn about why you need more powerful hardware.

Chrome books and phones teach nothing.

lern_too_spel | parent
It's one click to set up a Debian environment on a Chromebook. Same on an Android phone. You can learn plenty from that. Once you've learned the limits of what you can learn within that environment, it's not difficult to then unlock the bootloader and learn even more.
gizajob | root | parent
To be honest, anytime I see someone recommending how easy it is to install Debian I always feel like they’re some relic from the nineties. Kids likely won’t follow any advice starting with “install Debian”.
jjkaczor | root | parent
They will if they are at all "technically curious" and bump-up against the limits of "ChromeOS" and running software they want to execute. A couple quick searches will find them some instructions, and boom - after a week or so, they are running Debian, their own Minecraft server, Blender (poorly), or whatever had prompted them to look for alternatives.

Never underestimate the time investment and frugality of a "technically curious" young person... Myself, I would have been a happy end-user, loading/playing games, running software - except, I bought a cheap modem - with physical IRQ jumpers - and no documentation - and it's default jumper settings conflicted with my mouse in Windows. If it hadn't been for that cheap/frugal purchase and then having to invest the time to troubleshoot, I wouldn't have become "technical" and moved on to greater and greater challenges and learning experiences. Most people would have just returned it and got an external modem instead, or given-up on even the possibility of connecting to BBS's...

What is fundamentally different from the late 80's/early 90's, is now there is a tremendous wealth of knowledge on the internet to actually facilitate that troubleshooting type of learning activity. Is that better? Well - there will always be a "known solution", but what I find many people do now, is follow whatever the first set of instructions they find, treating them like a "magical spell", without knowing/learning "why/how"... [And if the first set of instructions doesn't work, the majority just "give up"]

Overall - in my experience, the percentage of people who are truly "technically curious" is about the same as it ever was - single-digits... It ultimately depends on whether or not their interests/passions/blockers align with being forced to go "beyond" their comfort zone.