cheap laptop suggestions that will boot to ubuntu without hassle

[Robert Heller]

At Thu, 28 Nov 2019 16:51:59 +0100 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 28 Nov 2019 at 16:43, Mike Marchywka <marchywka at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Actually maybe something like the raspberry PI? I guess besides cameras
> > generally unattended data recording of control of simple "lab" type
> > instruments. I presume many of those are USB- I think I got a digital
> > multimeter with a USB port but no documentation although it
> > could be reverse engineered ( maybe there was a windohs CD or something).
> >
> > The laptop is nice because of the battery even if many peripherals would
> > stop with the line power.
> 
> Laptops will continue to power USB peripherals when the external power
> goes but of course it reduces the laptop's battery life. Sometimes
> substantially.
> 
> The RasPi has no on/off switch. If it's getting power, it's on. It
> doesn't need a huge battery pack, but the snag is, you get no sensing
> of when the mains goes so you can't do an orderly shutdown. For that
> you need a UPS and that means $$$$$.
> 
> Also, RasPis have a reputation for lunching their microSD card when
> they hit problems. Such as power outages.

Never seen this myself.

> 
> With a Raspi 4 you can ameliorate this by only keeping /boot on the
> µSD and putting / and so on on a fast USB drive, but this adds to the
> cost and complexity, the RP4 needs cooling, and it has other issues.
> 
> I've actually been discussing this with a friend recently. There's
> room for experimentation with a RasPi and some modern distros which
> have read-only root filesystems (e.g. Fedora Silverblue, openSUSE
> MicroOS, EndlessOS, ChromeOS/ChromiumOS). But most of them lack mature
> (or any) RasPi support.

There are other options, including Banana Pis and CubiBoards.  Some of those 
have *SATA* ports!  And at least some of the CubiBoards have a separate LiPi 
battery connector and include a LiPi battery charger.

> 

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