I have a framework and love it but it’s probably not the best option for this. It’s kinda overkill and they can get a bit hot and loud. More of a desk laptop than a lap laptop IMHO. Also depends on how long you need the battery to last but this is reportedly better in the newer models.
I use Brave pretty much just for that purpose, while I use Firefox to browse everything else.
There isFirefox PWA, but it feels like such a shitty hack (don’t get me wrong, it’s not badly made, but they’re forced by the circumstances to make a setup process that is one big headache) that I’d rather have a browser that has official and solid support and it also doubles as my browser to test web content on Blink, so it’s a win-win for me
Yea, I tried with Firefox PWA, but as you have told, it was not usable for me. Most PITA was, that I had to install my plugins on any PWA again and again… I would love using a browser which is not chromium based but has nice PWA features.
Problem is that Webapps require a very unhardened browser. Complete caching, cookies saved, serviceworkers in the background, so if Firefox got the feature hardening would break it
I bought a used HP Elitebook on eBay for a similar purpose. I can browse and do video calls on a bigger screen when the fancy strikes. Pretty much any used business laptop should work. I think I paid about $300 for mine and I paid extra for particular hardware I thought was neat but you don’t have to. Only thing to keep in mind is the battery will likely be pretty worn.
I have a second-hand Thinkpad T480s that I love, I bought it for 250$ on ebay and replaced its battery because it was fried (+40$). I use it for school and it works flawlessly, around 8h of battery life in a well-configured OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. According to the specs sheet it shouldn’t be, but for some reason it is noticeably lighter than a friend of mine’s MacBook Air 2021.
What I really love about it is the ThinkDock Ultra (iirc 30$ on ebay), which lets me place the laptop on my table, and by just sliding a piece of plastic, it connects all of my peripherals in a second. I love this laptop so much that I’ll use it until it dies so hard that it can’t be fixed at all.
What you need to do is clean the dust off of your fans and ventilation filters (check guides or figure it as you go, but make sure to disconnect the battery and the fans from the mobo as soon as you open it). Then, repaste it with good thermal paste or some liquid metal if you’re feeling confident. I have liquid metal (thermal grizzly condoctonaut) on both of my laptops, and one of them which had overheated since day one, doesn’t anymore.
I bought a used Lenovo ThinkPad X240 Laptop i5 | 8GB RAM | 500GB HDD | for 50$ as a couch laptop to run Linux / Python code. I can browse the internet and it’s light.
I bet you money that you statistically use the touch screen keyboard on your phone significantly more than you ever are to your hardware keyboard for your PC.
You would be very very wrong, since I hardly use my phone.
But to your point, a soft keyboard is very different for conversational input that autocorrect and predictive typing excels at, and command entry and scripting where syntax is critical and you aren’t really typing in English or some other language.
I have that, never had problems, Bluetooth works as well! At least with the devices that play well with Linux.
You should check out linux-hardware.org too, it has a huge database of hardware probes that can help you know what works exactly from each device, the search page is what you want: linux-hardware.org/?view=search
Personally, I’m waiting to see how support for the M1 Macbook Air and Thinkpad X13s develop. I have a MBA already, so I’ll probably throw Asahi on it eventually, and then wait for the ARM wars of 2025.
I’m not at all a fan of the keyboard on the MBA, but being passive and 13" is perfect for the couch.
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