My favorite device is a Chromebook, without ChromeOS

4 hours ago

The author initially praised their Lenovo Duet 3 Chromebook in 2024 for its ChromeOS and Crostini Linux VM.
Two years later, ChromeOS experience worsened with issues like VM disk resizing, terminal corruption, and bugs, possibly due to Google merging Android and ChromeOS.
Frustrated with ChromeOS, they installed postmarketOS (Alpine Linux-based) on the Duet 3, supporting the google-trogdor platform.
Installation included full disk encryption (--fde) and btrfs filesystem for snapshots, with a subvolume layout set up for backups using btrbk.
postmarketOS uses systemd, making it easy to install Nix with flakes, and GNOME was chosen as the desktop environment for its tablet compatibility.
Post-installation, some hardware issues were noted: pen not working, docking rotation problems, and wonky external display support.
Despite limitations, postmarketOS runs well, with GNOME performing efficiently on the low-end hardware, possibly due to musl and a lean base.
Firefox runs natively and feels snappy compared to ChromeOS, and tasks like cloning nixpkgs are faster without VM overhead.
The author finds postmarketOS revitalizing, making the Duet 3 their favorite device again without ChromeOS, akin to past experiences with Arch Linux on netbooks.

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