I’m interested in ideas for small laptop-style devices that (1) run Linux and (2) are actually usable (i.e., not so small or low quality they’re basically toys).

My goal is for something to supplement my current, larger laptop. Something I can throw in a bag and pull out as needed during the day to take a few notes, read an eBook on, access the web, and so on.

Anyone have or heard of such a device?

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    1 hour ago

    Maybe not the smallest but I recently got a second hand Panasonic CF-RZ6 and it’s incredibly useful. Surprisingly most(all?) hardware’s working on Linux/FreeBSD/Win10/MacOS 10.13(OpenCore) that I tested, and the battery lasts about 4~5 hours with low clock speed on Linux. S3 sleep is also working pretty well. The japanese keyboard is hard to type on, and it’s pretty hard to obtain outside japan though.

  • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
    22·
    1 day ago

    I guess an important question is how small is unusable for you? That’s not an objective measure, and will be up to what you find usable.

  • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
    61·
    21 hours ago

    A 2012 11" MacBook Air will run ZorinOS nicely and is truly tiny but very usable. Any Air made between 2012-17, really, but the 11" is SMALL.

  • vala@lemmy.world
    3·
    20 hours ago

    GPD laptops run Linux well. Even their smallest laptop. So it’s really up to you as far how small you want to go.

  • Deestan@lemmy.world
    8·
    1 day ago

    This depends on how big hands you have.

    A fully usable system good enough to watch Youtube, do spreadsheets and play Minecraft can be a few inches wide.

    So basically what is the smallest keyboard and screen you find usable? There’s likely a laptop around that size.

  • Toes♀@ani.social
    4·
    22 hours ago

    Ideally an old business laptop or tablet.

    Something with at least 4GB of RAM, x86_64v3 compatible processor and SSD.

    Dell, Lenovo and HP all made decent tablets and business laptops so check out eBay for your country. You also might luck out with Amazon Renewed.

  • scytale@lemmy.zipEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    A netbook maybe? I used to have an old 10" lenovo netbook with a celeron CPU and 2GB of RAM. Worked pretty well with Lubuntu. I could even play StarCraft on it. If you just need it for light browsing and office tools, it should work fine. You can probably get one with at least 4 or 8 GB RAM for better performance.

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    I’ve had many laptops over the years, from the original eeePC to 17" portable workstations, and the smallest I personally found to be “usable” on a daily basis were in the 12" class; I used a Sony Z505 throughout law school. Get that size with a usable keyboard and touchpad. Anything reasonably modern with 8GB of RAM should be able to putz around in Linux as a secondary device.

    • azimir@lemmy.ml
      6·
      1 day ago

      I had one of the 10" eeePC machines for years. That thing was a tank. It did everything I needed it to, especially weird networking configurations. The battery also lasted over 6 hours. I mostly ran Crunchbang #! Linux on it.

      I don’t think I could live on a 10" screen anymore, but back in the day it was a dream machine.

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
        3·
        21 hours ago

        I don’t think I could live on a 10" screen anymore, but back in the day it was a dream machine.

        Interesting. Years ago I moved from an 18in desktop setup to something like your eeePC. Unexpectedly, I also found it fine. These days I have a 14in and it feels unnecessarily big and heavy.

        If you’re happy doing things one window at a time (i.e. monocle view, or basically as on mobile OSs), turns out the floor’s the limit!

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        3·
        22 hours ago

        For the hell of it, I used one as my main work laptop for a while. $199 plus $20 of RAM when I got it, IIRC.

        External keyboard, put the laptop on a cantilevered board so that it’s right in front of my eyeballs so that the screen size doesn’t matter, use it mostly as a thin client to a beefier machine so the CPU doesn’t matter much.

      • thefartographer@lemm.ee
        4·
        24 hours ago

        I had the original eeePC too. I found the problem with the screen to be the resolution, not the size. My Lenovo Legion Go with its 8" screen is perfect as my daily driver.

  • Paper_Phrog@lemmy.world
    3·
    22 hours ago

    Not sure how much power you need - but I just bought a used Microsoft surface 7 pro and installed Linux Mint on it. Was pretty damn easy actually. Runs great!

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    3·
    22 hours ago

    If you already have a larger Linux laptop that you’re otherwise happy with, have you considered just throwing it in a padded laptop backpack?

  • audaxdreik@pawb.socialEnglish
    3·
    22 hours ago

    https://x-plus.store/products/n150-netbook

    I saw a post on this a few weeks back and excited purchased one. I’ve had it for a bit now and I’m generally happy with it.

    If you’ve ever bought a Chinese product like this before, you know generally what to expect: about 95% quality and 5% WTF.

    Personally I put Arch on it using KDE Plasma/Wayland and touch is lackluster. Other distros might handle things better, but I’m an Arch guy and I’m sticking it out.

    • Keyboard is better than expected, but still a little janky. Key feel is surprisingly good but far from great, although sometimes they don’t actuate. I think that’s because I’m still learning to type on it. Key arrangement is not as big of an issue as I thought, although stuff like Tab, -, ", / can be a little awkward for typing terminal commands, plain text typing (like note taking) I can get pretty up to speed. Honestly the jankiest key is . but it’s placement in the center of the cluster still makes it fairly easy to hit
    • The screen is clearly a tablet turned sideways. I’ve seen this before and I think even the Steam Deck does this, but it does lead to some oddities like resolution being 1200x1920 and SDDM is sideways (I tried fixing it, I’m sure there’s a way but I broke it so bad on one go that I ended up just doing a reinstall)
    • It’s hefty, feels like a solid device, although maybe even a little too hefty when using it folded over and trying to hold it with one hand while reading

    For me it’s absolutely perfect for the kind of note taking, book/comic reading, emulator playing, internet browsing I need to do. Admittedly it may still be too close to that “toy” kinda feel though …