I asked Claude and it said look into The Ash Tree Man by Daniel Harms

• Doesn’t have millions to market like the alternatives.
• More technical requirement (historically anyways)
• Much less likely to be the default on hardware (which is what most ppl stick to)

Made the switch as well thanks to the modern key bindings

I self-host searXNG, but you can use one of the public instances as well. My understanding is that it is more secure because you’re search results are commingled with whoever else uses the instance, but you also can use something like libredirect to further distribute your search results across various instances for further security

This feels like a blog, in a good way. It’s interesting perspective hearing a Linux user work their way through issues, instead of the norm of being a seasoned vet. let me know if you have a blog and I’ll throw it on my RSS feed.

I use Pocket but I’ve been meaning to self-host Omnivore

My guess is also choosing the wrong distro and/or the stress of having to reconfigure your digital life.

Most people are coming from being on a PC/Mac for +10 years and so it feels inefficient for the first month or so until you get the hang of things. I legit had a checklist of +20 tweaks to make to my env to make it more to my liking. The joys and frustrations of choosing KDE as my intro DE almost drowned me but I made it to the other side.

I used to install VS code for every new install and now I just stick to Kate. Although the storage impact is minimal, a lot of the dependencies for KDE apps are already present if you are running KDE as your desktop env.

Chrultrabooks ftw!

Mid/high tier tend to have some flexibility re: upgrades (double check w/ specific models before purchasing). Cheaper models OTOH are mostly soldered but you could potentially auto-mount a micro SD in Linux.

Definitely could’ve mentioned that upfront tho, so appreciate the question

256 might be harder to track down than finding a 128GB w/ 8GB RAM and upgrading storage manually, but a mid-tier chromebook-turned-chrultrabook could suit your needs. From my experience, since the CPUs are a lower-priority, Chromebook’s mid-tier build quality exceeds similarly priced Windows laptops. Sleeker designs et al.

I’m obviously biased. I wiped ChromeOS & I’m running Debian on an HP x360 14c. Forum here: https://forum.chrultrabook.com/ and there’s a more active Discord link floating around.

https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tuis

To follow through Mastodon/Calckey/Firefish/etc, search for this in your instance:

@thelinuxexperiment_channel@tilvids.com

This was yesterday: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a35kp/scientists-have-reported-a-breakthrough-in-understanding-whale-language

I just did some digging on Best Buy and Amazon for sales, but mostly came across larger models or models that were MediaTek/Snapdragon (the chrultrabook team almost exclusively works on intel devices).

I’d say your best bet is to go to the supported devices list, and Ctrl + F for ‘13’ or ‘11’ to highlight the smaller-sized chromebooks and then check to see what’s available, or to jump in the Discord and pose the question to those in the linux channel

As of next month, I’ve been using Chromebooks for 10 years however I also came to the same conclusion re: Google/ChromeOS over the summer.

Initially, I bought a Windows laptop but the keyboard layout (specifically the function keys) felt absolutely foreign, even after I wiped it and installed Debian. In retrospect, my theory is that a $500 Chromebook has worse internals but a much better keyboard/trackpad than a Windows equivalent, and that the keyboard layout is more user-friendly in a browser-first world. Eventually, I went back to my Chromebook but with a twist.

I’m biased, but since you seem like you know your way around Linux and tinkering, one suggestion that hasn’t been mentioned is that you buy a new Chromebook and turn it into a Chrultrabook (aka a Chromebook w/ ChromeOS completely wiped & replaced w/ Linux).

I’ve been running one of the last few months and it’s been an overall pleasant experience. Perhaps most important for me is that the tutorial includes keyd to reprogram the keyboard shortcuts to mirror the Chromebook layout. The community is growing and responsive, especially on the Linux side.

Documentation website

Supported Chromebooks

Helpful Discord Chat

Brand new Forum that is still being built

There are plenty of Chromebooks that can wiped & replaced w/ Linux. I run Debian 12 on my HP x360. Check this list: https://chrultrabook.github.io/docs/docs/supported-devices.html