I bought an old HP chromebook cheap on ebay that came with Zorin OS installed. It isn’t much, but just about manages to do what I need. The trouble is, Zorin seems kind of bloated and the Chromebook hasn’t got much memory. I don’t even have enough space to install updates.
I’m comfortable with running a pared-down OS that might be a better fit for a tired old Chromebook. What might work better than Zorin?
I’ve been distro-hopping on a 2018 cheapo Chromebook for about a year. So far, I’ve tried Debian (Bookworm) with XFCE, AntiX, PeppermintOS, and now ARCH with Sway. None of the first three were particularly snappy, but they were all running full desktop environments. With Arch/Sway, I’m running about as light as I can get: no login manager, only 441 packages installed. Web browser is Helium. It’s early yet, but I think it does feel a little faster–most of the time. Helium still takes a few seconds to load, for example.
Running bare Arch is a bit extreme, but I think the real difference probably comes down to using a WM instead of a full DE. Sway is pretty light, and from what I could find, Wayland is supposed to be a little lighter/quicker than X11, but if toy want to go that way, you could use i3. Configuration from scratch can be a bit intimidating, but I looked online for shared dotfiles I liked and customized from there.
Good luck! Hope it goes all and is a fun experiment!
My specs: Astronaut (rev 3) Chromebook. Intel Celeron N3350 dual core @ 2.4 GHz with Intel HD Graphics 500 integrated graphics, 4 GB RAM, 32 GB eMMC storage.