I can also recommend the C720, I'm typing this comment from one. I am also running Arch, which is a perfect match for this machine with its minimal nature. This machine is small, lightweight, and the battery seems to outlast me most days. My only real complaint is with the limited amount of RAM (I have the 2GB model), since it isn't upgradable. I recently tried to launch Android Studio without a swapfile active, and let's just say that was an exercise in patience that eventually resulted in a hard reboot :). I did find the shiny display bezel a bit distracting, so I popped it off and sprayed it a similar color to the laptop body.
So my plan was to run alpine linux or maybe nix on one of these guys, I've done arch in the past and don't mind that but upgrades in arch can be ugh if you don't pay attention to the site and update frequently. And well, i'm getting annoyed in my old age with incessant tinkering.
Is Alpine really more stable than Arch+grsec+paxd packages? Considering it has a smaller userbase and uses it's own package manager?
I find if you don't update Arch obsessively and wait a week or two, then it is very stable.
I previously used a Macbook + Arch and had nothing but problems. But using a Thinkpad + Arch and being careful with updates and I've had zero of the issues I experienced non-stop last year.
The most important thing is hardware choice. Using good and common hardware means you eliminate about 90% of problems with Linux. Using stable software solves the other 9-10% of issues.
So my plan for alpine linux was to see how well a busy box + musl libc based distro would be for day to day use. That and its on disk size was mostly the motivation. The grsecurity stuff was less a focus to be honest. Stability wise as long as it doesn't oops too often i'm happy.
A counter to the wait a week or two idea: I remember the update that changed the md device numbers from 0->128 etc.. I hit that accidentally before it was on the site, then the next week didn't look at the site and it got changed back. Piddly stuff like this that you only find when you reboot starts to grate on me is all.
I'm not anti arch by any means, more just not wanting to constantly update with a rolling distro. I found a blog post about nix on the c720 and so I guess I will go buy one some upcoming week. My needs are pretty minimal though, browser+emacs+commandlineish stuff. The rest I can do on my macbook pro which is feeling to me to be more a desktop of late.
I paid a bit more for 4GB. With 2GB investigate using zRAM (compressed swap in RAM). My pre-built Ubuntu image came with it configured. Many say it can help running many instances of the same applications (browser tabs).
Yeah, I would have gone with the 4GB model, but I got this one through a Groupon deal for $130...
I remembered reading about zram being enabled in ChromeOS, not sure why I didn't think to investigate it. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely check it out!
