Chrome OS Bug Started Mistakenly Sending 'Final Update' Notifications

An anonymous reader quotes 9to5Google: Like it or not, Chromebooks do have something of an expiration date when you purchase them, namely that one day they'll stop receiving updates. Thankfully, that date is typically over five years after the Chromebook's original release. For some, however, Chrome OS has been wrongly indicating this week that their Chromebook has received its "final update" many years too early.

Just like the Chrome browser on desktop and Android, Chrome OS has four different update "channels" -- Stable, Beta, Dev, and Canary. Each one of these after Stable trades a level of stability for more rapid updates, with Canary receiving highly unstable updates almost every day. People who are bold enough to put their Chromebook on Dev or Canary have been facing an interesting new issue for the past few days. Upon restarting their device, Chrome OS immediately displays a notification warning that "this is the last automatic software and security update for this Chromebook." Of course, if you're seeing this message this week, there's a decent chance that this is not actually the case.

Instead, these final update warnings are caused by a bug in the most recent versions of Chrome OS.

What happens after the final update?

[hardeep1singh]

Do they just decide your machine is no longer worthy and you need to spend money again? Or do you install Windows/Linux at that point? Asking since my current PC, an i5 2500k based machine is 7 years old and still fully updated.

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[PrimaryConsult]

As far as I can tell (I own a Chromebook that went out of support a few months ago) it just sits with the last version. They at least make it easy to install Linux over it, I might do that when the next major Chrome vulnerability comes out.

Still it kinda sucks, it still has 10+ hours battery life and despite having a much newer cell phone and much newer PC, it's still the fastest at web browsing and booting up. Also had the least bloatware of any device I've purchased: absolutely none. The only apps it h

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[higuita]

no bloatware, but it comes with one spyware!
does it allow one to use firefox instead of chrome?

Firefox: Yes

[Methuselah2]

Yes, you can install Firefox on Chromebooks...IF they can install Android apps. (I did, and set Firefox as the default browser.) Of course the oldest Chromebooks didn't allow one to install Android apps, so not sure if that's helpful to your situation.

Built In Self-Destruct

[Ashthon]

I'm shocked that the supported life of Chromebooks is so short. I've been using this Core i7 3770 for 7.5 years and it's still going great. There's no need to upgrade the hardware as I can just change the operating system when necessary. Processors have long since reached a speed where they're capable of handing most jobs, so there's little benefit in upgrading. It's therefore disgusting that Google are rendering perfectly good hardware worthless after just five years.

So much for the value prospect of t

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[fintux]

Processors have long since reached a speed where they're capable of handing most jobs

I wonder if this is mostly due to the fact that the CPU speed increases have stagnated in the last years (a 486 with 8 MB of memory was capable of handling most jobs we do nowadays, back in the day). If we had had performance increasing by some 30-50% each CPU generation, like we used to, maybe the software would have bloated even more, and would not work on an older hardware. I guess we will find out now that we finally have some performance competition on the CPU market. On the other hand, mobile devices

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[lobiusmoop]

Actually I find it's a relief that they've stopped doing random updates on my chromebook now.

I think we've become too enured to the hassle of software updates. The unexpected necessity for reboots, the waiting for downloads, the stress of wondering what new 'features' have been snuck in, whether the gui has been subtly reworked by a clueless junior developer..

All of that grief can get stuffed. I've seen it all happen with Android and Firefox and had enough of it.

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[Jody Bruchon]

I have several machines from the Vista era (typically from 2007-2008) that can run Windows 10 and, with nothing more than a SSD upgrade, perform just fine for most basic needs. The power of computers exceeded the power needed by normal humans a long time ago. Today's generations of computers are even more amazing; for example, I have a $140 Celeron N4000 11.6" notebook that can cut 4K video thanks to the Intel Quick Sync hardware on the Intel UHD graphics chip and the software that uses those features to en

Planned obsolescence

[elgholm]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

Should be illegal!

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[Merk42]

Yeah, product should be supported forever, this wouldn't make the entire industry be unsustainable or anything, just gimme!

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[xlsior]

The 5 year deal wouldn't be a problem, if only they started counting by the release date. If a particular model has been on the market for 3 years by the time they sell it to you, you'll only get updates for 2 years total. Even Microsoft will give you 10 years of security updates after initial release of each os version

dev? no problem

[jarkus4]

if its on dev channel its not really an issue. Im sure they get all kind of annoying bugs from time to time. It doesn't even kill the system unlike one debian unstable update I had once unwisely installed (fighting with obsolete packages I switched to unstable and it turned out to be VERY unwise decision).

Wrong title ?

[leopardblanc]

Shouldn't the title of this news be : "Some people using the highly unstable update channel in Chrome OS witness unexpected behaviour" ? But yeah, I might not have clicked on it, then...

It's just a glorified web browser

[xack]

With some android apps tacked on. What's so hard to update?

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[Dagger2]

The web browser.

And the apps.

It's the FINAL UPDATE

[Anonymous Coward]

...deedelee doo, deedeleet deet doo, deedelee doo, deedeleet deet doo da doo, DOO DA DOO, DOO DA DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO...

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion