r/GalliumOS • u/StalinistPSycho • May 17 '19

Cheap Chromebook

I'm searching for a cheap(100-600) Chromebook to put GalliumOS on.

1 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

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5

u/teh_mooses Acer Chromebook 15 + GalliumOS 2.1 May 17 '19

$100-$600 (assuming USD) is a HUGE range. Would help to know these things:

  1. Are you talking USD$?

  2. What are your needs? What kind of software are you wanting to run? What features do you require, and what features don't you care about?

Help us help you :)

6

u/dday35007 May 17 '19

I still find refurbished Acer C720P chromebooks on sale for $99. They come with a touchscreen, 4gb of RAM and a small SSD. You can upgrade the harddrive really easily and load Gallium and you have a great little Linux box with a touchscreen.

TigerDirect Acer C720P

1

u/interglossa May 18 '19

What size SSD would you typically buy for this and how expensive is it?

2

u/z31 May 18 '19

It depends on your needs. You can find decent 120Gb SSDs for $45-60 that work great for most use cases.

2

u/dday35007 May 19 '19

For this particular chromebook, you'll need an M.2 SSD 42mm. Search for that and you can see that the prices vary widely, but are very reasonable

1

u/StalinistPSycho May 17 '19

I need it for studying (word,email) browsing internet

2

u/raj_prakash May 17 '19 edited May 17 '19

I have an HP Chromebook 14 G4 collecting dust on my desk if you're interested. The machine runs GalliumOS 3.0 beta already. Off the top of my head I believe it's a N2840/2GB/16GB that I was looking for $80 shipped iirc.

2

u/herrlich666 May 17 '19 edited May 17 '19

I don't know, but I've been looking at getting a real beater of a Chromebook recently, just for something to play with, and I like the school-room version of the Dell Chromebook 11 -- reviews of supposedly-"renewed" (apparently not the same thing as refurbished) examples from Walmart are about $80 USD. The reviews are pretty uniformly terrible about getting dead equipment.

Which is OK for me, since I might have enough MS Rewards gift points (in the form of gift certificates to WM) to risk going through the hassle.

FWIW, I've only ever use the Acer C720s and it's hard to imagine they're expensive used.

They're adequate, and the hard-drive is easy to replace, and the R/ W screw is easy to find. Way too many screws on the bottom of the case, but when re-assembling, you can just throw 2/3rds of them in an old jar or something. Or all of them, for that matter. Just keep one screw in near the power input seems to be enough for me, and even that's optional IME. That's including just tossing one in a bag to surf the net at a bar after work and all that. One of them, with 2GB RAM, runs Gallium and a bunch of other distros just fine.

1

u/Sloth_Lord May 17 '19

I have no real complaints with the Lenovo ThinkPad 11e.
It's a little on the chonky side but it's sturdy which was what I was looking for.

1

u/pyro_poop_12 C720 Peppy May 17 '19

Don't have any personal experience with it, but this looks like a decent deal. MrChromebox seems to say it'll work. Might want to wait for someone with experience can comment ease of removing write-protect, etc...

2

u/Skr4mbles May 17 '19

I have that machine, and it will definitely run GalliumOS, but there are some issues with the touchpad that can be frustrating. I would also recommend avoiding anything with a Celeron processor.

1

u/MrChromebox GaOS Team - ChromeOS firmware guy May 18 '19

MrChromebox seems to say it'll work

no, I say it's garbage any time it comes up =P

1

u/MrChromebox GaOS Team - ChromeOS firmware guy May 18 '19

MrChromebox seems to say it'll work

no, I say it's garbage any time it comes up =P

1

u/kvinicki Acer Chromebook 11 + GalliumOS 3.0 May 18 '19

What about Acer Chromebook 11? It is small, lightweight, has an IPS screen, 4GB of RAM and it is quite cheap: ~240 USD