Meta: Why can't I send links to my child on messenger? All messenger chats support sending images. There used to be a slider to enable sending URL links instead of screenshots.

Google and Chromebooks: Chromebooks don't support Inspect Element or Containers for FamilyLink accounts. This forces teachers and students to use clones of actual apps that run on Windows/Mac/Linux.

The Google Play Store charges a 15-30% cut. The Apple App Store also charges developers to host and scan their apps and people's comments.

FDroid hosts open source apps that don't need a DUNS number to push and scan their .APK, but those can't be sideloaded on student or FamilyLink Chromebooks; so students are denied access to most open source Android apps.

Students are locked into play/app store apps that don't work on other platforms.

Thonny and other IDEs for learning with no ads and a shell don't work on Android.

Android on Linux is very out of date. Waydroid's LineageOS's docker image hasn't been updated in years. Bliss OS has Android 12. The current released version of Android is Android 15.

IIRC Web Bluetooth passthrough doesn't work from apps in an Android VM or container, so no-go for the LEGO app on a Chromebook because it requires Bluetooth (which doesn't work well in a classroom of 20+). There's google/bumble.

There's WebUSB.

Android on Windows (WSA) is cancelled as of 2025-03.

Android apps on Chromebooks run in a VM that presumably must have SELinux, though the host doesn't have selinux-enabled binaries like `ls -Z` and `ps -Z`.

Students cannot install Termux in order to run a Linux userspace in an Android app or VM, because school districts aren't going to or haven't enabled installation of Termux from the app store because why would students need to learn Coding and Linux (git, bash, Python, IDK vscode) and Open Source on the computers we taxpayers bought for them.

Under-13s cannot sign up for GitHub.

Under-13s can't git clone from GitHub with vscode.dev or vscode, because it requires login to GitHub first.

JupyterLite can open repos from GitHub and does not require login. But JupyterLite doesn't yet have a terminal that connects bash in WASM to the in-browser filesystem.

There's soon to be a Google alternative to Termux. Hopefully districts will allow students to install that.

If students can't git, bash, and python locally on their Chromebooks at present - and the "Turn on Linux" button is greyed out for then - that means there's nobody who can hack on their team that's dogfooding this junk as a child.

Students learning to code and use a shell is more important than sysadmins' desires to be lazy. I'm afraid district sysadmins have grown complacent and lazy, because the kids can't code on the Linux workstations we paid to build for them (whereas they can on Windows/Mac/Linux/BSD).

Listen to the arguments against allowing students to run rootless containers, and then compare WASM process isolation with containers and APKs w/ mandatory SElinux in the guest VM.

Do you employ people that code?

Have they tried coding on a Chromebook configured for a student, as an Under-13 that can't sign up for most third party services due to COPPA?

How are students with containers and a shell advantaged?

How are students disadvantaged by only being able to run the WASM port of apps in a browser?

Compare e.g. MSFS (which requires login) with IDK X-Plane with Android.

Compare JupyterLite/vscode.dev (or Roblox Studio with rojo and vscode) with the actual real thing at home on a not c**y school computer.