Linux

I have a Thinkpad T480 that I'm very happy with. I believe it's around 7 or 8 years old, but it works great. Unlike most laptops, it doesn't have soldered RAM, so it's easily upgraded. One downside is that most units don't come with a lot of storage, so you'll probably want to get a larger drive. I spent around $200 on mine plus another $100 for the SSD. It's a great inexpensive laptop that'll last for years.

Not often mentioned, but Surface Laptops run Linux thanks to Linux Surface on Github. I've been running Mint on a Surface Laptop 4 13.5" for years with zero problems. Used and refurbished models are much cheaper than the other options mentioned here.

• Positives - Excellent display and keyboard, nice form factor, very light and thin, comfortable fabric cover on keyboard bezel.

• Negatives - Smaller SSD (256g), limited ports, larger display bezel, reportedly somewhat difficult to disassemble, initial Linux installation a bit of a pain.

13.5" models with I7, 16g and 256g ssd are going for around $300 on ebay.

My daily driver is a 10yo Dell business laptop. Before that I ran a similarly aged Lenovo. I run mint.

In my experience, the amount of ram and an SSD are the biggest contributors to how good the performance feels. Running mint on 4G is possible, but performance is comprised. 8G is perfectly fine most of the time. 16G (my current setup) is peachy keen. I'm astounded what I can do in blender on a 10yo machine.

That said, if you can afford one (and they operate in your country - they don't here), then grab a framework, like others have said. If that's not an option, then add some ram and an SSD.

My 2c.

I use Framework 13 with AMD for my Linux laptop, love it. I do not want to go back to any other brand.

Old ThinkPads

I think chromebooks are pretty locked down these days. The old ones you can unlock and install Linux on the bare metal are underpowered. 4g RAM and 64g storage typically. I use one as a touch screens for home Assistant and to run Pihole.

I would recommend a Think Pad with 4 cores and 8g RAM from eBay. Should be plenty for your use case and cheap. I have a 10 or 12 year old idea pad that I use about the same way you do and it still running great with PopOs.

I've shopped around for a 12+ hour Linux laptop, I think you should wait a little while to pull that trigger, Qualcomm isn't exactly great /w Linux, RISC is currently tripping on its own laces and people just aren't interested in making this kind of thing exactly, yet.

I'm guessing that in a few years a lot is going to change with low power laptops that can still compute efficiently.

I have a 5 year old laptop that when I set it to highest efficiency can get almost 4 hours as long as I'm not doing 200 things, which is fine most of the time.

Plus I've read in a bunch of places that putting standard Linux on Chromebooks is way more complicated than it ought to be, so I'm not sure I'd pull the trigger on that without first researching the specific laptop you're looking into.

Not that I've tried personally, just the Internets.

A refurbished Lenovo T14 or T16 should do it.

I would go for Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 AMD or System76 Lemur Pro. Not a cheap option, but supports Linux well.

Framework. Check the refurbs shop and get a great deal.

Stay away from Chromebook anything unless you get it for free.