Timothy, thanks for these detailed recommendations.
am i correct to assume that "matte" works best outdoors?
looking at other threads of yours, it seems you've had a chuwi laptop for about a year now. how's it going so far? sturdy?
about the HP chromebook - are you saying one can install a genuine full ubuntu on it - none of that crouton nonsense? what about other distros? apparently archlinux is possible.
may i inquire what the video playback is like on the hp chromebook with ubuntu?

snowpine, you're right, i should think about which distro i want. probably archlinux.
about your dell - that's oen of the xps 13's, yes? they look really good and old enough to be available used. i wonder if i would be making the right choice with one of those, or just blinded by the bling?

about homework - that starts when i start hunting ebay et.al. for good offers, and will be extended and tedious. i hope you understand i'm trying to get some cornerstones set first, with your help.
and you all did, so thanks for that.

It's been a while since I used Arch. AFAIK, they don't have a formal hardware certification program like Ubuntu or Red Hat. But they do have a pretty informative list of compatible laptops and various hacks/tweaks/workarounds: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop

Dell 9365 (XPS 13 2-in-1) is the specific model that is fanless. All other non-9365 models in the XPS series have a cooling fan (to the best of my knowledge). The tradeoff however is that the fanless model has a much weaker (and therefore cooler-running) processor. Another detail that might not be to your liking is that it has a glass screen (not matte) because it is a touchscreen.

I bought mine refurbished through the Outlet for about $700 USD.

Yes, matte works best outdoors, but is generally not as "vibrant" looking as a glossy LCD.

I've actually had several Chuwi's, the latest I've had for a year though (the 12.3). I love it. The touchpad doesn't have full touchpad functionality in linux (not recognized as a touchpad, which is endemic to all of the Chuwi's I've used) but single finger tap, double finger tap, and 2-finger scroll works, so it's sufficient for me to use them. With the 12.3, the dual channel ram really helps make it a bit more responsive than the other systems I've used that have the same chipset.

Yes, you can use a full Ubuntu (or any distro)on the Chromebook with the mr. chromebox firmware. I don't know for most distro's if they support all the hardware (reason I used GalliumOS), ie the sound chipset and touchpad didn't at one point work on mainline linux distro's, but I BELIEVE it's been added for baytrail. I'm not certain of that.

Video playback on the chromebook wasn't bad. 720p video played fairly perfectly. 1080p video would play, but would occassionaly experience an issue (usually an incomplete picture or dropped video). I had watched a few movies streaming from Netflix on it when I had it, and never had issues with anything via that.

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ok, the hp 14 chromebook came out 5 years ago and seems to have a really weak cpu? 1.4GHz dual core according to cnet.

anyhow, this is a precious tip, together with your other recommendations.
archwiki has all the info on chromebooks in general, and another page on hp 14 in particular.

i am more and more convinced that there's plenty of choice for me; finding reasonable quality is another matter, but i feel prepared now.

a matte finish on the display seems like a small detail, but i think it will be quite important for me, and narrow down my choices (i once tried putting on antiglare foil on a shiny screen, and it's just not perfect).

thanks to all.

All the Celerons are really weak CPU's. It's the trade-off for having them be 4.5-6 watt TDP (depending on generation and design). However, if you make sure to get the quad cores, they're not bad at all. You're not going to be gaming on them, but for basic usage they're fine. I wanna say in CPU benchmarks a quad core baytrail scores similar to like a Core 2 Duo T5750. I would avoid the dual core Celerons, they're rather limited in their abilities. I had soem in my Toshiba Chromebooks (had 3 of them), and they worked fine even with a 1080P LCD, but it would be hard to use them with more than about a dozen tabs open, or more than 1/2 dozen if you were using multiple programs even with 4 GB ram.

ok, my initial comment about being able to get really good deals from "clueless customers" might have been exaggerated.
the laptop market seems to be different than e.g. buying components for a desktop.
there's a lot of consumer-grade hardware (read: cheap sh!t in every respect) out there that can be had for a few bucks.
but certain brands are automatically offered for a higher price: thinkpad, dell latitude etc.
it's particularly extreme with thinkpads.

for a non-english speaker (and writer) there's the additional challenge of getting the right keyboaerd. i can put stickers on a foreign keyboard, but US keyboards unfortunately are physically different.

i have since learned that a matte display is not the only aspect for outdoor use.
there are incredible differences in screen brightness & contrast. the notebookcheck.net site has helped me a lot these past days.

long story short i am now considering buying a jumper ezbook pro 3 from gearbest.
there's an italian keyboard on offer (why italian, of all languages?) that has the right physical layout, and it seems they do ship to finland for a very fair price.
there currently is an offer, 176.20$ incl shipping!!! hard to believe.
ordering from amazon, it would be 240 euro plus shipping from china, which adds another 90€.
i would appreciate if someone could confirm this incredible offer?
and does somebody know what (if any) additional tariffs are to be expected when buying consumer electronics from the USA, into EU?
thanks.

linux compatibility for the ezbook 3 seems fine except for the touchpad (same as chuwi lapbook?),but i just got confirmation that kernels 4.18+ support the touchpad (fully?).

Anyways. Acer Swift series also sells with Endless GNU/Linux preinstalled.

The machines are cheap and small..

i found out that i still have to pay some taxes on import, but even so, ordering the jumper ezbook from gearbest would be by far the cheapest option.
however, the web ui does not allow me to finalize the payment.
i've tried a dozen times now, no exaggeration, with different browsers and virtual machines - no dice.
it alwasy hangs on the last step, when i'm to choose payment methods.
i wish someone could help me...

ezbook with Italian keyboard - that narrows it down. There's VAT at point of entry, and the couriers cough up fast to get it in fast, and some add a vat on vat charge that they collect. FedEx is bad on this. I'm surprised you can't do better in Europe. I never found it cheapest to buy American, and returns are impractical. Oh well.

Have you checked Aliexpress? many companies on there will ship out of Europe also.

EDIT: Have you tried their App?

I know there were a couple companies on Ali Express that carried the Ezbook too, at least they did months ago last time I checked that site. Not sure if the price was competitive with gearbest though.

I had considered getting the EzBook myself. Basically exactly the same hardware as the Chuwi lapbook 14, but at the time I had bought the lapbook, the EzBook was more expensive, therefore my going with the lapbook. But should be a great laptop.

i looked at ali express, but afaiu they also imprt it from china so it's the same with the VAT.
i have read in different places that gearbest always have the best offers for these ezbooks; however much i search, nothing beats the current offer of 176$, and nowhere is it being shipped from inside the EU.

but, good news, i finally managed to get the order through!
had to do it through my phone, go figure.

so that's 183$ with shipping, add to that 24 VAT, it's just above 200 - still a good price!

Yes, definitely not a bad price at all for the specs it has. should be a very good laptop, doubly since that whole dual-channel ram (to my knowledge all the 6 GB apollo lakes have dual channel that I've seen) does really help keep that cpu peppier than with single channel 4 GB.

For laptops, I would go with Asus. I've had a dual core K53E-RS32 for 10 years now and it still works as well as it did the day I got it, if you don't count an id10t error made on self-servicing with the display flex cable a few years back. I use it as a headless server install.

And since Chromebooks were mentioned somewhere in there, those are just about the worst laptops for a Linux user. Operating systems aside, the hardware choices leave you with a small storage drive and no DVD.

^ small storage is no problem for me.
it can even be a boon - i suspect the ezbook was on offer so cheaply because 64GB just isn't enough for windows 10 - linux users benefit!

a few years ago, i think chromebooks were a big problem with linux, but people have been working on it ceaselessly, the kernel's compatibility has also increased...

but anyhoo, the ezbook is pure intel.

this thread is solved as much as such a bikeshedding question can be, since i placed my order.
i will try to remember to give some feedback once i get the device & install linux on it.

So, my interactions with GearBest have been futile.

I ordered a very cheap (200 USD) Ezbook Jumper 3 from them on Nov, 12th.

When it still didn't show as shipped out after 12 days, I decided to open a ticket and ask what's going on.
This was the start of a long and ultimately futile attempt at communicating with "Customer Support" - full of misunderstandings, evasive answers and, I suspect, some straight lies:
Always use polite phrasing, but ultimately keep telling them the same BS over and over...

When I ordered, I knew this is a very cheap offer and I probably have to pay for that somehow. I was willing to accept some delay.
At the same time I wanted to keep them on their toes - but it turned out that, after 40 days, after many evasive and uninformative answers - basically I just wanted to get some clear info on what the status is with the supplier - they misunderstood my warnings and returned the money.
Disappointing and not what I wanted, but I guess I should be glad I got my money back and count my (non-monetary) losses.
:-(

Here's a PDF of the ticket. It's ridiculous.

Moral: don't use GearBest.