I'd add that to the list of free rides for large corporations.
Students getting Chromebooks aren't sucked into the Linux ecosystem and open source community that encourages you to improve parts of the system yourself. Instead, it leaves system maintenance (and learning experience) entirely to the administrator and really only provides Chrome as the operating system, with all implications.
Control your data locally? Why not upload it to Google Drive instead. Learn git commands? Better find that hidden Developer Mode switch, because crosh isn't going to get you very far. Get involved in improving Linux or Chromium? Nah, better edit some JavaScript in a web view with someone else's proprietary online code editor.
Google can (and will) swap Linux out of Chromium whenever they want to, because none of the interfaces and none of the community overlap. When Fuchsia gets swapped in, neither you nor the students will notice, and it won't have made a difference other than Linux having helped Google's locked-down, centrally controlled platform to succeed.
Sure, then I'll get a different laptop. Or maybe by that point free software on other devices will be far enough along that I won't need a laptop? The future is networked, inescapably. It's fine to advocate for local data, but don't expect that to mean data on a drive in a box on my desk.
If we can make a future happen where I can control software and data on a remote device, in a way that works for students, then sure. Otherwise, I wouldn't count pure access to the internet/web as actual victory for GNU/Linux. (Maybe as victory for education opportunities, productivity, etc., but tying that back to Linux is a very indirect connection.)
Either way, ChromeOS doesn't contribute to taking (co-)ownership of any of the above and encouraging the freedoms commonly associated with the use of Linux. Neither does it sustainably establish even the Linux kernel as pillar of the OS, it's just an implementation detail to be hidden and potentially replaced later. So why exactly should we look at ChromeOS as GNU/Linux having taken off for the casual user?
If you're defining Linux as the free-for-all open source community product, you're inherently defining why it will never take off for the casual user. That's not who that's for and that's not what the casual user does.
Students getting Chromebooks aren't sucked into the Linux ecosystem and open source community that encourages you to improve parts of the system yourself. Instead, it leaves system maintenance (and learning experience) entirely to the administrator and really only provides Chrome as the operating system, with all implications.
Control your data locally? Why not upload it to Google Drive instead. Learn git commands? Better find that hidden Developer Mode switch, because crosh isn't going to get you very far. Get involved in improving Linux or Chromium? Nah, better edit some JavaScript in a web view with someone else's proprietary online code editor.
Google can (and will) swap Linux out of Chromium whenever they want to, because none of the interfaces and none of the community overlap. When Fuchsia gets swapped in, neither you nor the students will notice, and it won't have made a difference other than Linux having helped Google's locked-down, centrally controlled platform to succeed.