YOUTUBE EE7bed5vD0Y Chromebook Plus for under $400 is about equivalent to a Macbook Pro (not as thin, not as nice, but highly polished). Intel core i3 cpu, 8GB ddr5 ram / 512GB SSD / matte IPS 1080 screen. On sale I paid $250 from Costco, typically $350 - $400 at Best Buy.
YOUTUBE LX6jP5zpNHo Debian is now the default Linux for Chromebooks, the install is much easier than Crostini dual boot was, Linux is enabled in ChromeOS system settings by UI setting, which starts a container that runs Linux without rebooting between ChromeOS and Linux. Effectively highly polished ChromeOS becomes the GUI for the Linux file system.
YOUTUBE iysOEYcQ-6g Popular dev tools VSCode, Sublime, Nano, Git are all clean package installs at the bash prompt.