I’m in the market for a Linux friendly ultralight laptop to check web apps and run terminal, nothing fancier then that. Do any cheap systems exits these days? I was looking at a chrome book but apparently the mediatek chip doesn’t play nicely with FOSS.
Any thoughts?
Personally, I’m waiting to see how support for the M1 Macbook Air and Thinkpad X13s develop. I have a MBA already, so I’ll probably throw Asahi on it eventually, and then wait for the ARM wars of 2025.
I’m not at all a fan of the keyboard on the MBA, but being passive and 13" is perfect for the couch.
Any chromebook that supports Coreboot. Absolutely unrepairable and very low storage, but good Linux support and coreboot!
mrchromebox.tech/devices
But be aware a ton of features that would work on ChromeOS don’t work, I’ve done this to 4 and all have separate problems
Very interesting! I had an Acer Chromebook I couldnt even open up, so I got rid of it as fast as possible.
Could you share experiences?
- keyboard layouts, missing buttons
- what features are missing?
- anything else thats good to know?
Thinkpad 11e
Ooo I think this may be the winner!
I picked up a Black Friday Lenovo ChromeBook (Flex 3) for US $160 and use it essentially the same way you describe. You can load up a Debian-based Linux environment within ChromeOS. It’s basically my web-capable thin client.
I used a Pinebook for that
I went with a used ThinkPad yoga 370. It still only has a dual core while the following Gen has 4 cores, so it seemed there was a price gap. It has thunderbolt 3 for when I want to switch to a bigger screen (with a cheap USB c dock) and USB c charging. Also I wanted to try a touchscreen on a laptop. I should be able to upgrade the single ram stick in it at some point. Running arch with sway without problems.
Edit: I had a x240 for years before. It was fine but I appreciate the higher resolution of the 370, even if I ended up using fractional scaling as it was just a bit too small.
What price bracket are you looking at? The two laptops that I normally use in that situation is a used Thinkpad X1 Carbon I got on eBay, and a HP Dev One that works pretty well for that.
I am fine with refurbished but ideally looking for around 13" and under a couple hundred bucks
The Thinkpad link that was shared below looks pretty nice, they tend to be fairly cheap and easy to get replacement batteries and parts. There’s a lot available in that $150 to $200 bracket on eBay. Edit: I just saw it’s 14", so a bit bigger than what you wanted. You can filter by screen size and price on eBay to give you an idea of what you can get. You may need a new battery depending on the age, so keep that in mind.
Would a Framework laptop work?
If it was going to be my daily drive. They are just too expensive to have as a system I can use while sitting with the family.
I have a framework and love it but it’s probably not the best option for this. It’s kinda overkill and they can get a bit hot and loud. More of a desk laptop than a lap laptop IMHO. Also depends on how long you need the battery to last but this is reportedly better in the newer models.
The pinebooks are pretty inexpensive. I can’t speak to quality or usability though
Pi-top or similar?
Something with a spacious keyboard would be great.
I prefer the T480 series (imo Thinkpad went downhill from there onwards). The non-s is a great off-road laptop, but for what OP is asking, the T480s seems like a more sensible choice.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/155206247310
Without the trackers
I was leaning thinkpad.
I have that same laptop, and it sounds perfect for what you want. Cheap, repairable, and runs linux well.
What about something like the Thinkpad X201? It’s not ultralight but it is quite small.
Other than that I’d probably say a Chromebook with a Linux install. Second hand they are quite cheap and can likely do what you are after. A lot of them have passive cooling which is nice for a couch device. I was able to install libreboot on my C201P quite easily and now it just runs a traditional Linux install
I’m writing this on my x201 on my couch. I love it, but it’s not a great couch laptop. It’s kind of heavy, runs hot, and has poor battery life vs more-recent comparables.
Yeah the heat would be what would make me hesistate to use it as a couch laptop but if OP wants something cheap I would say it’s an okay option
I used to have X230 as a daily driver for laptop (I got separate desktop) and it’s a really nice machine for it’s size. Only the display is a bit lacking by todays standards as it’s only 1368x768, but for 150€ (give or take) it’s not too bad.
When you say webapps, may I ask what method you prefer for using PWAs on Linux? Do you install them as apps? If so, how?
I mean in firefox, not trying to get fancy.
I use Brave pretty much just for that purpose, while I use Firefox to browse everything else.
There is Firefox PWA, but it feels like such a shitty hack (don’t get me wrong, it’s not badly made, but they’re forced by the circumstances to make a setup process that is one big headache) that I’d rather have a browser that has official and solid support and it also doubles as my browser to test web content on Blink, so it’s a win-win for meProblem is that Webapps require a very unhardened browser. Complete caching, cookies saved, serviceworkers in the background, so if Firefox got the feature hardening would break it
Isn’t that kind of the point though? I’d appreciate the option, but I don’t know how usable actual web apps would be without access to those things
Yes of course. Thats why support would totally be possible, but it needs to be a seperate unhardened firefox profile. Then all good.
Yea, I tried with Firefox PWA, but as you have told, it was not usable for me. Most PITA was, that I had to install my plugins on any PWA again and again… I would love using a browser which is not chromium based but has nice PWA features.
Maybe you can try GNOME Web if you don’t like Chromium, it should have them too, not sure how good the implementation is, though
It seems to work as I want 😃 thank you!
Awesome!
I bought a used HP Elitebook on eBay for a similar purpose. I can browse and do video calls on a bigger screen when the fancy strikes. Pretty much any used business laptop should work. I think I paid about $300 for mine and I paid extra for particular hardware I thought was neat but you don’t have to. Only thing to keep in mind is the battery will likely be pretty worn.
Check out /r/laptopdeals daily until you find something that fits your needs and budget.
