small laptop (recommendation?)

[William]

I hope this is right category.  I have 11.5" HP Chromebook and ThinkPad T450, and am not satisfied with either.  I looked at 15", 16", 17" laptops, and didn't like them.  On the 14" ThinkPad, I have all the apps in full screen.  If I do that, I discover, 14", 13", 12" would be the same.

So, I'm looking for small laptop like the Chromebook, but with regular capability like the ThinkPad.  I'm browsing BestBuy, Newegg, and CanadaComputers.  Is there any other place I should look at?

[ssfc72]

Hi William. You could try the Microsoft Canada store.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/d/surface-laptop-4/946627fb12t1?activetab=pivot:techspecstab#tab1015f8aca-eea0-48b0-a052-d725c582aec3

[fox]

I will, in short order, put my Dell xps 13 2 in 1 up for sale.

[Jason]

What is it that you don't like about the ThinkPad? Is the screen too big?

I'm not sure you can get something as small as Chromebook other than a Chromebook unless you get used. Back in the day, there were members with small PCs like that called Netbooks. If you can find one of those, that might work for you. They were around 10" or 11", I believe.

Note that you can run Linux on Chromebooks, sort of, at least the more recent ones. They let you install a terminal-based Linux development environment based on Debian. It's kind of what Windows does with their Windows System for Linux except modern versions of Chrome are based on Linux (and Android, which uses a Linux kernel). I have not tried it but I understand if you have enough storage and RAM you can install a graphical interface on it and then run it inside the Chrome OS like a VM. Both can be hard to come by with a Chromebook.

[William]

What is it that you don't like about the ThinkPad? Is the screen too big?

Yes, 14" is too big, and even 13" is too big.  I'm eyeing ThinkPad 11e, partly because Lenovo is spamming me.

Note that you can run Linux on Chromebooks, sort of, at least the more recent ones. They let you install a terminal-based Linux development environment based on Debian. It's kind of what Windows does with their Windows System for Linux except modern versions of Chrome are based on Linux (and Android, which uses a Linux kernel). I have not tried it but I understand if you have enough storage and RAM you can install a graphical interface on it and then run it inside the Chrome OS like a VM. Both can be hard to come by with a Chromebook.

I have old Chromebook which can't install a native Linux.  So, I'm running Kubuntu (xenial based) in a chroot container via "Crouton" script.  You only have limited choice of distros that it supports.  Now, I find the whole thing -- ie. buying something, and then spending time to go outside its use-case -- silly waste of time.  Why not just get something which can do it, in the first place!