Hacker News Reader

If you're looking for 13 inch, standard HD screen with long battery life, and all you need is browser and SSH functionality, you might think about trying a Chromebook. The SSH functionality comes as a Google-made extension [1]. The CPU and RAM specs are usually lower than you mention, but in my experience the machine runs fine for video calls, Netflix, etc.

[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...

View on HN

I switched to an Acer R11 Chromebook for something small and handy and cheap. It runs fast enough for browsing and shell stuff. Keyboard is decent, and it isn't flimsy.

I've also install crouton for a full Ubuntu environment, which I use occasionally. But mostly I'm ssh'ing into my workstation and servers.

My only annoyance is the caps-lock key, which is now the Google search key. You can press Alt-Search for caps-lock, but it is slow and a little glitchy.

Thanks for the recommendation. I forgot to mention I only run linux, I don't want to be tied into an OS like ChromeOS when I don't have direct control over it. I have considered wiping one and installing linux over the top.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com