> Of course, I wouldn't do these on a school-specced Chromebook that costs $200, but $700 Chromebook would easily suffice.

I have used linux VMs on a an old $200 Chromebook (with a $50 Costco discount) and it's perfectly fine, Linux can go a long way with only 4GB RAM/32GB eMMC. It doesn't receive updates anymore, so I use the latest Firefox from Devian repos to browse the Internet instead of the stale Chrome that has many open CVEs