Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Chrome Operating Systems Technology

Now ChromeOS Can Reset Itself Without Erasing Your Laptop (theverge.com) 17

Posted by msmash from the good-thinking dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google announced it's rolling out ChromeOS M131 to non-beta users, bringing with it a handy "Safety reset" feature that lets Chromebook users reset their laptops without totally wiping them. The update also introduced a new "Flash notifications" accessibility option to help those who might not otherwise easily hear or see them.

Like Powerwash in ChromeOS, Safety reset will wipe the slate clean if you're experiencing computer virus-like behavior such as unusual pop-ups. But where Powerwash is a full factory reset, Safety reset preserves local data and apps, as well as things like bookmarks and saved passwords, according to a help document about the feature.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Now ChromeOS Can Reset Itself Without Erasing Your Laptop More

Now ChromeOS Can Reset Itself Without Erasing Your Laptop

Comments Filter:
  • Why is this not standard design on every OS?

    • Not every OS has a separate home.

      I didn't even on Linux until I started using ZFS because it was too inconvenient using multiple partitions because what about when I wanted them to be different sizes? But now that I am using self-growing filesystems which get more blocks from the pool as needed there are no drawbacks.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Because in a lockdown OS the OS author gets to decide what and where someone can save data. In a normal OS the user can - permissions allowing - can save stuff wherever he wants in whatever format he wants so how is the OS tidyup system supposed to know whether its save to delete it or not?

      • Sounds like a bad design allowing user files to be tucked into OS system folders, but what do I know? Folders used to be called directories.

        Everything just goes somewhere in C:\windows\... what could go wrong.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dougmc ( 70836 )

          Everything just goes somewhere in C:\windows\... what could go wrong.

          Well, even Windows puts user files under C:\Users\{username}.

          But when you reformat, everything under C: is lost. You could set up things to have the OS in C: and user files in D: so user files can be saved in a reformat, but then you have to worry about the size of each partition and make sure it's appropriate.

          That said, when installing apps Windows certainly does put stuff *everywhere*.

          All that said, I'm a bit surprised that they care so much about ChromeOS being able to reset without losing data -- I mea

          • I'm a big proponent of semi-annual backups. If you have a major problem then copy your user folder onto an external storage and restore to the previous backup.

            Once you've restored to the previous backup, allow Windows to install updates and check your programs for updates in the past months. After Windows and all the programs are back to normal, use a program to check the current User folder with the one saved to the external storage using a program to identify differences, like WinMerge, Meld, or Kdiff3.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Reeses ( 5069 )

            All that said, I'm a bit surprised that they care so much about ChromeOS being able to reset without losing data -- I mean, the important stuff is stored by Google as a part of your account anyways. "Safety reset preserves local data and apps, as well as things like bookmarks and saved passwords" -- well, local data tends to mostly be caches, and the rest of what's mentioned is stored in one's Google account.

            My guess would be that they're doing it at the request of school IT departments that are flooded with Chromebook support and need a way to reset/refresh them without wiping out the student's data.

      • So how exactly is this stopping the OS from going back to a clean slate while keeping user data available? You generally only need to reset system folders to a known good state for a "system restore", for when something breaks and you don' t need a full factory reset to make the device exactly the way it was when you got it.

        A "normal" user shouldn't be able to write to system folders or modify anything in them. That's what access control and root is for. This is why up through WinXP Windows was swiss cheese

        • NT back to 3.51 at least (that was where I came in) would not allow a normal user to write to system locations.

          Of course, back then and through NT4 as well at least many of not most people really did run as admin all the time so that their windows software written for Windows 3.x (non-NT) would work, as it often needed to be able to write ini files to those locations due to bad design. (They never should have done that to begin with.)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Of course, back then and through NT4 as well at least many of not most people really did run as admin all the time so that their windows software written for Windows 3.x (non-NT) would work, as it often needed to be able to write ini files to those locations due to bad design. (They never should have done that to begin with.)

            Yeah, most Windows apps stuck their preferences files under C:\Windows because it was easy., Of course, it wasn't, it caused a ton of issues (what if a user put Windows elsewhere? Local

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Reeses ( 5069 )

              Of course, a lot of it is because until Windows NT, the DOS based versions were single user systems.

              And because Microsoft didn't take the opportunity when they had it to get rid of the A:, B:, C:, drive naming scheme when they had the chance. They could have done it when Win95 shipped and few people would have complained.

        • Windows was swiss cheese security wise. And to some extent still is since most users are able to elevate UAC prompts to administrator levels.

          Elevate isn't really the correct word. It's the one chosen by MS, but in reality, you switch to the Secure Desktop, which is running as NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM, to create a new user token with the required (and MUCH more limited than SYSTEM) permissions. So in reality, it's more like dropping permissions rather than gaining them.

          As far as "most users" goes, that's due to decades of products outright refusing to work unless the user was running their code with Administrator privileges. See also most PC games

    • ChromeOS is merging with Android.

      Fuscia is Afuera! now.

      Android has /data which this is getting closer towards.

      There's probably room to improve Android too with lessons from ChromeOS.

      Whichever fork of Linux survives, LF (now racist and DIE) or Global, it appears Google will continue to support it.

    • Because this is mostly useless from a malware perspective.

      /home would be the first place compromised by any malware infection. Indeed, it's the intended target for many of them due to it containing unique data to that machine. Data that may prompt a change in tactics for the hacker. (Grandma's Chromebook? Throw up some ransomware for bitcoin. Some school system's Chromebook? Go lateral and see what else is ripe for the taking!) It's not safe by any means on an infected device, and leaving it intact may al
  • Sounds a lot like what Apple is aiming for too

  • I thought the whole point of ChromeOS was everything was backed up to your Google Drive and synced with your Google Account?

Slashdot Top Deals

If you don't have time to do it right, where are you going to find the time to do it over?

Close