Linux

I've shopped around for a 12+ hour Linux laptop, I think you should wait a little while to pull that trigger, Qualcomm isn't exactly great /w Linux, RISC is currently tripping on its own laces and people just aren't interested in making this kind of thing exactly, yet.

I'm guessing that in a few years a lot is going to change with low power laptops that can still compute efficiently.

I have a 5 year old laptop that when I set it to highest efficiency can get almost 4 hours as long as I'm not doing 200 things, which is fine most of the time.

Plus I've read in a bunch of places that putting standard Linux on Chromebooks is way more complicated than it ought to be, so I'm not sure I'd pull the trigger on that without first researching the specific laptop you're looking into.

Not that I've tried personally, just the Internets.

Going to piggyback off your post with this comment.

Where can we get laptop (m.2) wifi cards that are supported by FOSS drivers? I've been having a hard time finding them anymore.

I bought a very cheap N100 laptop that worked perfectly with EndeavourOS. If you don't need a not of gaming prowess, or massive storage I recommend something modest. PM me and I will send you a link, I just don't want to junk up the forum but 16 inch screen, 16gb of ram and a 512gb ssd and it is perfectly respectable, though the touchpad isn't great it does work in Linux, I just think the design is a little too tight. I will agree that a lot of laptops work fine and you can "test" them with a USB stick instead of going through the full installation.

I think chromebooks are pretty locked down these days. The old ones you can unlock and install Linux on the bare metal are underpowered. 4g RAM and 64g storage typically. I use one as a touch screens for home Assistant and to run Pihole.

I would recommend a Think Pad with 4 cores and 8g RAM from eBay. Should be plenty for your use case and cheap. I have a 10 or 12 year old idea pad that I use about the same way you do and it still running great with PopOs.