First of all, your original question was, "How is any of this better for consumer freedom than just Windows 7?" Being able to easily switch to any OS is obviously better for consumer freedom.
So now you are asking a different question. But are you serious? One of the main barriers to Linux adoption has been the difficulty of switching as a result of lock in. Are you seriously asking how the elimination of that barrier could be good for Linux just because it also eliminates the same barrier for other operating systems?
OK, the default alternative to ChromeOS is that people use Windows. Using ChromeOS does not decrease the switching barrier to using Windows as compared with having used Windows in the first place, it only decreases the switching barrier to using Linux or MacOS. Moreover, MacOS can't be installed on a Chromebook, so there remains the substantial barrier to switching to MacOS of buying a different, much more expensive computer instead of just installing a desktop Linux distribution on the Chromebook.
>By this logic most free people are people who don't use computers at all, they have no switching barriers.
Is there some reason you expect that conclusion to be an absurdity? Fact: People who have never used a computer are the ones with the most freedom to choose between operating systems, because they have nothing invested in any of them yet.
You seem to be implying that this is somehow not the case. Please elaborate.
Anyone with a computer can switch to no computer at all. But yes, anyone who can't live without their computer is not free. I guess you could say we've sacrifice some freedom for power.
It's the same reason I like having a macbook - I can currently also boot into windows natively or several flavors of unix via virtualization - every os has strengths and weaknesses, why not have them all?
If people can run linux, it helps linux. Even if they only "know" they can run linux. It's mindshare at that level.
