I need something that I can just write LaTeX documents on. What is the best & cheapest (I'm hoping to keep it under 200 bucks) netbook + distro combination for simple work, not gaming or simulations or kernel hacking?

I'm sure someone must have posted this somewhere but I couldn't find it.

Does it have to be new?

I kept this one under 40 bucks.

It has a touchscreen with a plastic pen. I make everything work by myself.

link

Otherwise. I guess a Chromebook or Arm netbook with quad core arm are what newer cheap netbooks are sold as.

The reason I asked if used matters. I'd slap in ssd drive in the below bad boy and install the linux of my choice. I already have done that once before on one of those units.

link

Last week I found a system 76 with ubuntu on it for under 200 bucks.
I forget the model though. It had the 13 inch screen.

Edit: If in the USA, Better grab it before it is gone.
System 76

1 members found this post helpful.

New is nicer.

I generally avoid pay pal, so this restricts me from not purchasing on ebay.

Mostly I want to find something on Amazon. If I can find it there then I would buy used. But I also don't want something broken.

Years ago I would buy something and then load linux and only part of the machine would work, or maybe I couldn't get the net to run or something else silly would happen. I'm really looking for a machine that will give me little hassle.

Hi...

Welcome to the forum

I'm not sure how much hassle it would be but here's a netbook that might fit the bill.

Or, if you want something newer, you can look under the $0-$200 category here.

Regards...

Here's the real problem...

If I buy something like this...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...&condition=new

how do I know it will work, and with which distro?

Wow,
this is pretty awesome

http://www.amazon.com/8-9-Inch-Netbo...in3A7817221011

unfortunately i need a bigger keyboard

Getting any used business class notebook in that price range will probably serve your needs better. Older hardware generally has better support under Linux these days because people have had more time to hack together drivers.

Also, you can put a credit card through paypal's payment portal without linking a bank acct.

Good luck.

By searching for people who have used it with Linux, or finding in depth details on it's components and determining how well they work with linux.

MOST of the system will, it's just a matter of how hard it will be to get the touchpad to work properly as a touchpad, how hard the wireless is to set up, and possibly how hard it is to get sound working. The chipset/cpu works wonderfully with linux, and that CPU uses a basic integrated GPU that works with open source Intel drivers that are reasonably well supported.

You could look at chromebooks. They're cheap, and can run Linux easily in a chroot if you need it.

Some will also run it natively with a little bit of work. I love my HP Chromebook 14 that's running Fedora 23.

That's the same one I linked to in my previous post.

Regards...

The Lemur that you linked to is, IMO, the best of those that you linked. That's actually not a bad little laptop. Dual core hyperthreaded...while 1st generation core has NOWHERE the IPC of even second generation, still nice processor. I never found those EEE PC laptop's to be even tolerably fast.

Thank you. If the OP chooses this particular netbook, he/she might want to upgrade the memory as much as the motherboard will support, which hopefully is more than 1 GB!

Regards...

I've installed Debian on both an older Samsung ARM chromebook and a newer Acer with Celeron. I wound up reinstalling Chrome, though, and just run Debian in a crouton chroot. I do run Debian natively on my Asus chromebox, though, and it makes a great desktop. I'm happy enough with ChromeOS on a laptop, because of the fast booting, efficient hibernation, and because ChromeOS does almost everything I need. I don't need to worry about rebooting or hibernating my desktop, though, so Debian works very well there. There really isn't that much that ChromeOS doesn't do, and do well, but there are some things it just can't handle, like disk partitioning, running Audacity, etc. I don't need to do those on the couch though.

Fu9ar, I don't have a credit card, being post bankruptcy a la 2008 crash.