Hi,

I eagerly read the other thread, as it's close to what I'm after.

I'm looking for a smallish (say, 10-11") laptop with very long battery life.
CPU power doesn't matter much. I don't need a lot of disk. 4GB RAM is needed,
8GB would be ideal but not required. x86 or ARM, both are fine; I'll be putting
Debian on it.

Here's the deal. I have a Lenovo Chromebook Duet. It has long battery life. I
can charge it with a cell phone charger (a feature I would VERY much like in a
laptop, because then I could travel with just my Anker and cut down on travel
cords and such).

But, Crostini (the official Google-sanctioned Linux environment for ChromeOS) is
actually running under qemu emulation and is seriously slow on ARM. So slow
that it's not really usable. Plus, I don't want Google on my laptop. I want
Debian, and AFAICT Debian won't run on the Chromebook Duet.

The idea is: thin, light, all-day battery, hopefully fairly cheap.

Options I've seen so far:

- Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3, it's $250 and has a rated battery life of 11 hours.

- The Acer 1.35" Swift 3, a bit pricy at $580 but had a rated battery life of a
whopping 16 hours. Ubuntu is known to work on it per
https://askubuntu.com/questions/951121/installation-and-compatibility-on-acer-swift-3
with the exception of the microphone. Not great but I can survive.

I'm also open to tablets. Sadly the PineTab has been out of stock for ages.

I've heard negative things about Acers in the other thread.

What do people think?

John

On 3/24/22 21:35, John Goerzen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I eagerly read the other thread, as it's close to what I'm after.
>
> I'm looking for a smallish (say, 10-11") laptop with very long battery life.
> CPU power doesn't matter much. I don't need a lot of disk. 4GB RAM is needed,
> 8GB would be ideal but not required. x86 or ARM, both are fine; I'll be putting
> Debian on it.
>
> Here's the deal. I have a Lenovo Chromebook Duet. It has long battery life. I
> can charge it with a cell phone charger (a feature I would VERY much like in a
> laptop, because then I could travel with just my Anker and cut down on travel
> cords and such).
>
> But, Crostini (the official Google-sanctioned Linux environment for ChromeOS) is
> actually running under qemu emulation and is seriously slow on ARM. So slow
> that it's not really usable. Plus, I don't want Google on my laptop. I want
> Debian, and AFAICT Debian won't run on the Chromebook Duet.
>
> The idea is: thin, light, all-day battery, hopefully fairly cheap.
>
> Options I've seen so far:
>
> - Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3, it's $250 and has a rated battery life of 11 hours.
>
> - The Acer 1.35" Swift 3, a bit pricy at $580 but had a rated battery life of a
> whopping 16 hours. Ubuntu is known to work on it per
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/951121/installation-and-compatibility-on-acer-swift-3
> with the exception of the microphone. Not great but I can survive.
>
> I'm also open to tablets. Sadly the PineTab has been out of stock for ages.
>
> I've heard negative things about Acers in the other thread.
>
> What do people think?
>
> John
Have you looked into buying a used System76 laptop like the galago?
It's not the smallest (14-15") but it looks like it supports usb-c
charging and has a 14hr+ battery, though might be a little pricey, even
used. So, it's thin, light, long-lived battery but not really cheap.
Another option would be something like the Dell Latitude D620 or
one of the early E numbers. They're very cheap and have a long battery
(new battery), but they aren't thin and need the charger.
The galago is built for using their Ubuntu derivative Pop!_OS, so
everything should work with Debian. The Dell on the other hand will
probably have trouble with the wifi card out of the box as it will
probably be a broadcom. Not too hard to fix, but still something to
consider.
As for the Acer thing. I haven't had a good experience with them.
For me, they were on par with low end HP laptops, just not as prone to
spontaneously falling to pieces with even moderate use. Just my
experience though, your millage may vary.

I realize this is several months old at this point, but figured I'd put
it out there anyway.
Best,
Austen