That's cool, but oof, that price. I think one of those cheap $200 (just over) laptops you can get on Amazon with USB tethering to my phone would be my choice. Maybe a cheap fabric sleeve case to go with it. Even if I lost one, I could completely replace it and still be under the cost of this setup, and while a small laptop/netbook, it's still very usable. I bought 5 to play with for $DAYJOB the other month, and besides being a pain to get the big windows 10 update on because of low free disk space, they work great.
I own netbook and before that an actual Psion series 5 and series 7. They all really do seem like a great idea. On the netbook I set the text size tiny so I could still get two columns of 80 char lines. But the problem with all of them is the keyboard. It's just too small. If you're used to typing at a high wpm and use emacs like me then you will feel retarded. I never ended up doing anything productive on any of them.
I stuck to netbooks/sublaptops before and it kinda worked for me, last one was a Lenovo Ideapad. Was eyeing 13" MBPs for quite some time but they are really much more in weight/bulk. But last year went for 12" Mac with RAM maxed to 16gb, couldn't be happier. Almost netbook like outer dimensions: still comfortable to use on the bus/plane. Same weight and thinner, usable keyboard. Great battery life, and enough horsepower even with the m3 cpu. Fanless, just like my Ideapad was!
My ThinkPad X1 Carbon seems to tick all your boxes with the exception of the tablet form factor. I love this thing. I get ~12 hours battery life, can run full-fat Linux and Windows, it has a superb keyboard and trackpad (and TrackPoint!), beautiful screen (I have the HDR model), loads of memory and solid state storage and 4 USB ports! (two type C and two type A). And it only weighs 1.1KG.
I have tried and failed to work on a tablet but they are just too limiting for me as they always rely on a stable internet connection to a VPS which isn't always possible easily and sometimes I just want to get on with work without the internet as a distraction.
The X1 Carbon is a fantastic laptop. The X1 Yoga is basically an X1C that can go tablet or tent mode and has a touch screen. It might be what GP is looking for:
Bluetooth is a bit patchy at the moment (the keyboard drops out occasionally); I'm waiting for a software update to fix that. (Jolla's updates are frequent, so I'm not fretting about this.)
Now, it runs Linux, with a proper terminal, and a suite of software - I'm using Emacs with SBCL and Erlang. (I had to compile Erlang - not a problem at all!)
Going through your list:
- SSH 'out-of-the-box'
- Emacs (or Vim)
- not quite Ubuntu; it's RPM based
- a smaller form factor than iPad Pro, but that's what the tablet will hopefully rectify!
- proper multitasking, unlike Android or iOS
Plus, I get telephony, and VPN support in the OS.
Compared to iPad and Android tablets, this is a breath of fresh air - no idiotic hoops to jump through (rooting the machine); simple to transfer files via SD card, USB, or just use SCP from the terminal. Root access is just a 'su' away.
- use SSH
- edit & run code (i.e. python / JS etc.)
- preferable running Ubuntu
- form factor of iPad or iPad Pro
- multitask with browser, terminal and editor
Your article is the closest thing I've found so far. The list of tools that you use are also useful, thank you !
If it had Ubuntu, it would have been a perfect solution for me.