On 2022-08-26 18:40, Michael Galea via talk wrote:
I am hoping to tap the wisdom of the list. I'm going traveling and I don't want to lug around my 5.2 pound T420. Not on this trip.
If I buy a cheap refurb Chromebook from Best Buy or Canada Computers: - Will I have luck wiping ChromeOS and installing Debian? Can I still encrypt the disk? - If instead I just run Linux on Chromebook, can I run a wireguard VPN? - Can anyone recommend a minimum spec level for the machine?
Thanks to Colin, Hugh and others for their advice. I went with the Lenovo Ideapad 3 11", mainly because of the weight. Setup was straightforward, and performance was surprisingly good. I installed the latest Debian on it but found that ChromeOS would not use Debian's kernel. This breaks wireguard VPN as debian builds a kernel module that matches the resident kernel. There is a voodoo approach to flashing the chromebook with debian directly but this version is new enough to not be supported by the tool chains that are out there, and I am cowardly. So for now I'll use Linux to ssh and mutt while away. In retrospect, I should have taken Colin's advice and blown away the Windows laptop with debian. -- Michael Galea