> Will be a disaster to make so many machines obsolete.
Not at all. Most Chromeboxes/books can be unlocked to install whichever OS the user wishes. I have like a half dozen of them happily running Debian, Manjaro and Alpine after unlocking and reflashing them with the firmware (Coreboot) at https://mrchromebox.tech/
They're really good quality hardware, and once given a proper OS they become very reliable mini PCs.
Not at all. Most Chromeboxes/books can be unlocked to install whichever OS the user wishes. I have like a half dozen of them happily running Debian, Manjaro and Alpine after unlocking and reflashing them with the firmware (Coreboot) at https://mrchromebox.tech/ They're really good quality hardware, and once given a proper OS they become very reliable mini PCs.