What's The Ideal Give-Away Computer?

Alex Byrne
Youth Services Librarian
Mastodon: @TheyofHIShirts at glammr.us

for

Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (SeaGL)
4 November 2023
#SeaGL2023

My Background

Let's start with a little bit of my background. I've been a tinkerer with computers for most of my life, including that rare privilege of being able to have a computer in my own room as a child, and having taken apart and upgraded that computer repeatedly over time as I was able to source components for it. Beyond that, I've installed, reinstalled, upgraded, and worked with various operating systems, including MS-DOS, Windows from version 3.0 onward, and various flavors of Linux once I had a computer that it would play nicely with.

Most of that work has been in the service of trying to get video games to work so I could play them on my own computers, and on a child's budget, each component is usually carefully chosen and saved for so that maximum effect can be achieved for the available monies. These days, I have more freedom to spend money and can therefore occasionally dedicate a small computer to a single-ish task, rather than having to make one machine (or two) do everything that I want to have happen. All told, that gives me thirty-*cough* years of experience with trying to build and work with machines inexpensively.

In my professional life, I work as a librarian in a public-facing setting, which means I have a vast range of grownups and children that I see regularly, and who have an entire spectrum of technology issues and questions they have for me and the other people I work with. My organization has recently adopted a focus on working with people who are ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Cconstrained, Employed. ALICE folks are working, sometimes multiple jobs, but they generally don't have deep reserves to draw on in case of expensive emergencies, they're not usually building assets that they can draw on later on in life, and the money they're making might be enough to get them from one month to the next, but it's not likely to be more than that. What that means, though, is that ALICE folks are usually making more money than the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) and therefore don't qualify for many of the assistance programs put in place by U.S. state or federal governments, but less money than they would need to comfortably live on their wages and to put some away for savings and emergencies.

The Problem Space

The problem space we're looking at is more general than ALICE families, but ALICE families are more likely to be in this problem space than others, so a solution that works for them will likely apply well to those outside of the ALICE space.

Both children and grown-ups often find themselves with computing resources that haeve been provided to them by either their schools or their employers. Because the schools/employers want to protect the assets that they've purchased and to ensure that unauthorized activities do not take place on their machines, most of the computers provided by schools or employers have been locked down in one way or another, so that all of their functions are not available to the user. Many of these machines also have monitoring software installed on them so that attempted unauthorized use is captured and reported to the school or employer so that disciplinary action follows. Spyware, bossware, and locked functions indicate a lack of trust between the issuing authority and the user about what appropriate use is.

Public access computers, such as those available at public libraries, are often subjected to the same kinds of constraints and locking of functions, along with some of the same kinds of reporting functions in case of misuse or illegal activities, and children are usually subjected to filtered internet access as a requirement of the Children's Internet Protection Act, which ties necessary discounts on computer equipment and services ("e-rate discounts") to the use of "technology prevention measures" to restrict a child's access to unapproved portions of the Internet. So while the library computers may be more open than school computers, they are not open in the way we would like them to be.

A significant number of low-cost technology options change the general-purpose computer into an app device, where what the machine can do is mediated by whatever the "app store" carries. most computers that have been changed into app devices have a significant amount of their functionality locked away. Much of this simplification and locking is intended to prevent malicious apps from entering the ecosystem, but also has the knock-on effect of subjecting the user to whatever the app store creator believes is "appropriate" functions for the device to have. What the app store creator determines is appropriate is usually heavily influenced, if not outright dictated, by advertisers who will be extremely cross if their ad appears on a post about content they would not want associated with their brand.

Thus, the problem we are facing is that most people do not have a general-purpose computing device that they can exercise full control over. That lack of control over their device impedes gaining proficiency in not just the device, but the general concepts underlying the specific implementation a device may have that are transferable to other situations in their lives where they must navigate unfamiliar situations.

The Target Audience

The target audience, then, for a hypothetical give-away computer is vast and spans most demographic categories. Mud-spattered children, tweenagers, and teenagers who have been told all of their lives that they are "digital natives" and therefore need absolutely no training at all on how to use computers, because they've been using them all their lives and have osmosed everything necessary to succeed. Adults who have some computer skills but are looking to expand their knowledge and try to find ways to achieve the tasks they want to without fighting locked-down machines or other entities insisting that this is not something a good user should be trying to do on this device. And, a class of people that I see regularly, seniors and valued elders who have had a device bought for them, dumped into their lap, told "it's easy, it's intuitive, you'll figure it out on your own," and who can't seem to find anyone who can answer their questions about everything, because nobody has taken the time to explain a damn thing to them about anything at all, on the assumption that everything is easy and intuitive. All of these people will benefit from having a general-purpose computer they can fully control in their lives.

The Requirements

If we were building an ideal give-away computer to solve the problems that we have, for the target audience that we are aiming for, what's non-negotiable about that machine?

It must be inexpensive.: Expensive devices are treated more carefully than others, and a significant amount of knowledge about computing, and especially about recovering from errors and difficult situations, is about doing things that are potentially dangerous to the stability of the machine itself. A computer that costs $750, $1500, or even one that costs $300, where that $300 is the result of months of squeexing a budget to afford it, is going to be treated as a precious object instead of a learning device. (Additionally, funders like being able to distribute as many units as they can for grant funding, so the less each unit costs, the more they can give away.)
It must not be locked in any manner.: These machines are meant to expand knowledge and encourage experimentation, therefore we must exclude any device that is limited-purpose or that, by design, prevents access to certain parts of the system. We cannot, therefore, give away Arduino, Android, iOS, or other devices with locked layers, dependencies on App Stores, or that can only be used with a limited number of apps. (ChromeOS also fails in this regard, but stick a pin in that, because the devices themselves that ChromeOS runs on may still be useful to our purposes, once we have removed ChromeOS from them.)
It must be general-purpose.: This device must be able to perform the basic tasks of a general-purpose computer. It must be able to edit text, edit still images, browse the World Wide Web, watch videos, listen to sounds, and play games. It does not have to be able to multi-task these options, nor does it have to be able to play AAA games or seamlessly encode 8k video at 120 frames per second.
It must be fixable when it breaks: This counts for both hardware and software. The ideal computer can have components swapped out if they fail, software patched if it becomes a security risk or new functions are developed for it, and if everything goes completely pear-shaped, it should be easy to wipe it all out and start again, either fresh or from a backup. By lowering the costs of failure or unwinnable situations, we encourage experimentation and doing potentially dangerous things with big potential payoffs. As well as helping someone learn to diagnose issues, read error messages, and find information and solutions by reading manual pages and other documentation about what they are trying to do.

The Niceties

Beyond the requirements, there are also some thing we would like about this computer that aren't required, but will make all of our goals easier to achieve.

Hardware is user-accessible and user-upgradable.: Preventing e-waste is important in this situation, so it would be very nice if the ideal give-away computer not only lets the user access the hardware and see how it's all put together, but allows the user to swap in a new, more powerful component to keep the machine running and on task, or if they come into a little bit of a windfall and decide to spend it on getting their perfectly fine computer able to keep going for a few more years.
Portable: We want the ideal give-away computer to be portable, so that users can collaborate with each other on projects, so users can take the machines (and their error messages) to a place with a knowledgeable person so they can see what is going wrong firsthand, and because a lot of users need their computing resources available to them where they are at the moment, rather than having to be at a particular space to engage with their computers.
Truly inexpensive: The ideal give-away computer should cost less than $100 USD to fully kit out and be ready for a user to pick up and start using at the point of acquisition. That stretches grant budgets quite a bit, and it allows for people who want to sell such machines at cost, or as part of "buy one, give one" schemes to not price themselves out of their target market or force themselves to rely on the largesse and good will of people to spend more money than they otherwise might so that someone else can also have a necessary piece of technology.

What's The Ideal Give-Away Computer?

My Background

The Problem Space

The Target Audience

The Requirements

The Niceties

Desktops and Single Board Computers (SBCs)

End-of-life (EOL) Chromebooks

Pick Two

Software Considerations

Size Problems: On Chromebooks

Size Problems: On SBCs

Technical Skills Necessary For Setting Up the Give-Away Computer

User Support

Do Your Own Support

TLDR

Licensing