raspberry laptop?

The current crop of inexpensive laptops is likely to be less costly, based upon the add on costs to make the Pi into a true laptop equivilent.

Desktop always strikes me as the route for build-your-own. The idea of a build-your-own laptop with no extensibility seems like a fool's errand.

you can buy a hackable-to-linux chromebook for similar money

So the question really is: do you want have a cheap Linux laptop or do you want to tinker with hardware and get a somewhat usable laptop as a by-product. The Pi-Top is nice when you want to add some custom circuitry to a portable computer.

I think you have the nub of the matter there, exactly.

Desktop builds are higher budget. I like the idea of something that I won't mind losing the entire cost of the project. And for a kid, a personal laptop has a bit more cachet than a desktop.

I'm fully aware of this. I've owned and used netbooks.

The second case. If all I wanted was a cheap Linux laptop, I'd make sure it was an x86 for better precompiled software selection.

One of my questions was (basically) "Is there anything else in this field?" for which my intended meaning was "build-it-yourself hack friendly laptop". It seems like the answer to that is "No". Just similar price-point small hardware devices that will run Linux.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

Elijah

------ the kid is already using "little bits" to do circuitry, this is the next step

Assuming the proposed laptop has at least an available USB port, why not consider using an R Pi as sort of a peripheral? Using an Ethernet or WIFi port (R Pi 2B) might be even more flexible.

Depending on what is contemplated, an Arduno with 5v i/o might be a bit better than the 3.3v i/o R Pi's. (The caveat might have to do with what is common amongst the kid's cohorts.)

A possible concern with some of the inexpensive laptops is that they can just about "brick" when switching from normal to developer mode.

Years back, you could get "black box" no name laptops intended for further customization. I haven't had my hands on one for a very long time.

I'd say this is the best choice. Using any B model RPi and a cheap Ethernet hub ir wifi dongle lets you run the RPi headless, i.e. without needing a mouse, keyboard or screen for it, which saves the space and expense needed for directly attaching mouse,keyboard and screen to a freestanding RPi. If the laptop is running Windows, installing PuTTY (free download) on it lets you run the RPi over an SSH connection using the laptop's mouse,screen and keyboard. If you want a graphical desktop on the RPi, substitute one of the free Windows X-terminal packages for PuTTY.

Of course, if the laptop runs Linux, you just connect the RPi to the laptop via ethernet or wifi and start using it.

A Pi based kit is probably not the cheapest way to acquire a laptop so unless you see some educational value in it being a kit it might be simpler, easier and cheaper to buy a laptop. A refurbished Lenovo T530 gets you a reasonable laptop at a reasonable price. Swap out the stock disk for an SSD and max out the memory and you will have a useful box.

Buy said laptop, rip it completely to bits, index the parts and carefully bag. Spray paint the casings florescent green (optional).

Give it to the youngster with the Lenovo Hardware Maintenance Manual, an SSD and a Linux build CD.

I have a Motorola Atrix Lapdock - and I had high hopes when I got the Zero that I might be able to fit it inside, sadly not. However they're still avalable, so pick one up and glue a Pi to the lid.... The biggest issue is the connectors (HDMI & USB) into the dock - they wobble a bit and power loss is not uncommon )-:

Gordon

Or you can install a VNC server and XRDP on the Pi. You can use VNC directly, but RDP is nicer.

---druck

As it uses XRDP acts as a client to VNC/xvnc, which manages the connection to the Windows box, I'm guessing that you can run VNC with the

--http option and point your Windows web browser at the RPi rather than using a vncviewer. Its been ten years since I last used VNC, so is this an possibility?

Horrid editing on my part, so here's another try:

If I understand the XRDP documentation, it provides X-term server services to programs running on the remote system while acting as a client to VNC/xvnc server, which accepts connections from the Windows box. So, I'm guessing that if you run VNC on the RPi with the --http option set, you can use your Windows web browser[1] to display sessions managed by the VNC server as an alternative to vncviewer.

Its been ten years since I last used VNC, so is this an possibility?

Not quite, it provides a Windows Remote Desktop server so any Windows machine can connect using the Remote Terminal Services client, or Linux can use Remina.

It needs a VNC server installed on the machine, but you can configure this to localhost only so you don't expose VNC's limited password based security to the outside world. I use x11vnc so I can link to the current desktop session, some other VNC servers create new sessions.

You can use a browser to port 5800, I haven't tried that for a long time. I found a dedicated VNC client to be much faster. Using RDP is just about the same speed, but doesn't suffer from compression artifacts as much, and offers slightly better security.

---druck

En/Je/On 2016-01-25, Eli the Bearded

I built my own home-made portable RPi and I'm using it as my main computer. Probably it's not what you're looking for, but it may be interesting for inspiration or ideas:

List of components and links to previous more rudimentary models I built: