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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

Intel-powered Chromebooks are great for running Linux and you can get them for $150-$300

The best part is you don't have to run it inside ChromeOS, you can simply remove ChromeOS, enable the legacy boot loader, and use a regular old Ubuntu USB installer.

Of course, the models with more RAM are ideal, as well as being able to upgrade the M.2 SSD, but even a 2GB RAM/16GB SSD model will run pretty good, especially if most of your work is remote or on the cloud. Ubuntu 14.04 takes up about 7GB of storage.

I love older Thinkpads but these are cheaper, slimmer, and have more battery life.

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After going through several Linux laptops over the past decade, including a couple of Thinkpads, I agree. My current Chromebook running Ubuntu is by far my favorite.

The whole setup comes in under $300: buy a certified refurbished Acer C720 from Acer with 4GB RAM and 16GB SSD (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L87JC80) and, separately, a 128GB MyDigitalSSD (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EZ2E8NO). Replace the SSD and install this custom-made Ubuntu distro that includes all of the fixes for the C720: https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/. And that's it!

Do you really feel like 4GB of RAM is enough? And do you happen to know if there are any Chromebooks that have upgradeable RAM? What kind of development do you primarily do on your Chromebook? I've been thinking about switching to a Chromebook, but I don't know if it's right for me just yet.

>> Do you really feel like 4GB of RAM is enough?

It depends on what you're doing. But there's a whole world out there of people being very productive on 4GB MacBook Airs, and Ubuntu uses far less memory than OS X.

Yeah, it's enough for me. It's my primary development machine by choice, and it's enough to do anything I need at a terminal (running emacs, developing and testing rails servers, docker builds, etc.) while keeping Chrome open with a few dozen apps including a few gmail and chat windows open.

I have a friend running stock Debian wheezy on a C720 who's very happy with it, although he does most of his serious work on desktop machines.

My friend forwarded me the "recipe" he followed to make this work with Debian wheezy: http://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2014/04/20/c720-deb...

He hasn't been able to adjust the screen backlighting, says he's got to try that again, with that issue it gives him 4-5 hours between recharges vs. the reported ~8 in the above linked item.

PSA: not all chromebooks have seabios in their coreboot... The Toshiba CB35, for example, does not. Meaning: you cannot easily replace chromeos for the time being.

Is the Toshiba CB35 the same as the Toshiba Chromebook 2 with the highish resolution 13" display and 4GB of RAM? I went Googling, and found some ambiguity as to whether this model number refers to their first gen or their second gen chromebook.

Sorry it took 12 days for me to see this reply.

In case you hadn't figured it out, yeah. The Toshiba Chromebook 2 with the IPS 1080p screen is what I was referring to.

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