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NixOS on a Acer Chromebook R11 (piefed.social)
submitted 4 days ago by rozodru@piefed.social to c/linuxquestions@lemmy.zip
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I recently was given an old Acer Chromebook R11 from someone who was clearing out their stuff and didn't want it. As is right now it works just fine but I thought that I would put linux on it. I know how to do so via chrultrabook but I'm just curious if putting NixOS on it would be a smart idea. It has 16gb of internal storage that is soldered in so I can't really upgrade it. I do however have a 2TB dedicated server which it would be connected to at all times. But with NixOS Generations and nix store I'm wondering if that 16gb would fill up quick and make impractical for a chromebook.

The chromebook is a touch screen and can flip the monitor around also so It'd be nice to also use as a virtual second screen via remmina or whatever for my main laptop.

Would NixOS be a decent choice or should I consider a different distro?

thanks.

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[-] Object@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

NixOS disk consumption is really bad unless you're going to keep it very minimal. On top of that, rebuilding takes a lot of computational power and RAM, so it would be very slow unless you remotely rebuild your laptop from the dedicated server. I have a small server (1GB RAM, so it's even worse), and I can't rebuild on that server without thrashing.

But if it is just going to be used as a second display, I can see it working. Maybe build an ISO image from config, and installing that would work well.

[-] rozodru@piefed.social 5 points 4 days ago

yeah it's not going to be used for much. I was just thinking a browser like QuteBrowser, maybe Krita if it can do it, Wezterm, and of course remoting into on my main laptop so I can use it as a virtual second screen. that's it.

So maybe another distro would be a smarter choice? like just a barebones Arch?

[-] Object@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

That sort of sounds minimal, though I would worry more about the desktop environment. It shouldn't take too long to try it out from the way it sounds, and I would bail the moment I see "no space left" error. Arch is pretty light, so yeah, I would go with that.

[-] actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

MX Linux XFCE is great for tiny drives. I've successfully run it on multiple 16GB systems, with space to spare.

[-] rozodru@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

yeah I was also thinking that. a light weight distro with like XFCE or just a barebones WM like DWM or Sway or whatever. It doesn't need to do much, just run a couple things. so slapping KDE or even GNOME on it would be overkill.

this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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