offline-first laptop

james

hardware

  • very portable, 13" or smaller
  • older and reliable
    • like a Thinkpad or Dell / HP business class ultraportable, although a 12" MacBook would be cool too as they’re small and light
  • USB-C charging
  • large battery
  • SSD, likely a larger one for local storage and services
  • comfortable keyboard for writing
  • built like a tank but at the same time cheap enough that you don’t care too much about it’s appearance
  • stickers
  • at least a couple cores and 4GB RAM
  • integrated graphics only, low res screen is fine
  • good well supported wifi card and Ethernet jack (Intel)

software

OS

  • LTS distro, likely Debian minimal with packages installed on top
  • suspend properly supported

userspace

  • very lightweight WM instead of full DE
    • i3 or Sway
  • powertop and similar power savings modes and daemons
  • Docker for running local services, but disabled and stopped by default for battery savings
  • disable all visual effects
  • quick screen off and sleep times

software

  • offline Wikipedia download with web UI
  • office tools
  • torrent client
  • the usual vim and terminal tools
  • mapping tools
  • VPN clients
  • VLC media player + ffmpeg