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Comment by taude | Hacker News Reader

I'm interested in responses here. I'd like to get a lightwight laptop, similar to my 11" Mac Book Air. I don't feel like I want to pay Apple prices for a second "travel" machine.

I would like to be able to run Emacs on it. It doesn't have to be full blown dev machine, but I'd like some of my simple tooling, and backup to cloud storage to share with my main work machines.

I currently using an iPad with a Brydge keyboard attached (I paid $350 for the setup, ipad on sale for $250 + $99 keyboard), which I love, but I don't have native Emacs and some other stuff, so I'm actually looking at a Chromebook. I think I could do most stuff with native Android apps and the web browser. I'd still like to figure out the Emacs/lightweight development type of thing. I've tried some of the online tooling like repl.it, but have a hard time with the portable keyboard bindings...

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I recently picked up a Yoga C630 out of curiosity. I figured that if the chromeos thing didn't work out, then I could probably install linux. It turns out that the C630 is a pretty capable machine - I'd initially toy'd with developer mode but gave up pretty quickly once I found crostini.

The chrome crostini project [0] basically gives you a little container in which you can run a terminal (probably more, but a terminal is good enough for me). Docker is supported so I can run additional containers within the crostini.

I've pulled all of my dotfiles into the crostini terminal, and have encountered very few issues experimenting with docker, python/flask, ruby, and C/C++ locally. I can't speak to emacs, but vim/tmux run as expected.

The C630 in particular has worked out remarkably well: the hardware is much better than I'd expected, the battery is very good, the touchpad is second only to my macbook (this is what piqued my curiosity initially), and the display, while not matte, is big and bright enough to split a browser and terminal side-by-side.

The C630 would probably fit the bill for a nice travel box. It's not as pricey as a macbook, but at $600-700 it's a little more than most chromebooks.

The only real concern I have is the reliance on Google and the G-ecosystem.

[0] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/c...

This is pretty interesting. Thank's for the details, I might try this out.

With Android app support, I use termux and just SSH into a server I keep my command line environment set up on. Termux has the emacs package too though (https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/tree/master/packag...).

I've done that as an option (I can do that from my iPad). But I'd really like to be able to be disconnected, do all my writing, have it synced to the cloud.

I can't rely on available internet connection (with this portable setup).

The Inspiron 11 from Dell might be what you're looking for -- you can get it with either Windows or Chrome OS, and it often has models that are under $200. It's not a bad machine for the price, and it's a really nice mini form factor for travel.

I just took a look. I actually don't mind spending $500 to get something in a little bit better form factor and a much better screen. Something like those Samsung Chromebook Pros are what I'm eying up.

The Samsung Chromebook Pro form factor is nice but did ship with an older kernel, which is preventing them from enabling Linux app support. You should be able to find one around $400ish though.

I should preface that I'm officially a "SCREEN" snob. Otherwise, I'd probably just buy a few 2014 11" MacBook Airs and burn through those over time....

But, I'll check out the Inspiron 11.

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