I used an Atom-based netbook as my primary dev machine for a while as a student, and it was ... okay, but not recommended. I used GUIs, but not full IDEs. (I

I used an Atom-based netbook as my primary dev machine for a while as a student, and it was ... okay, but not recommended. I used GUIs, but not full IDEs. (I highly recommend KDE's Kate text editor.) I've since upgraded to an Intel i3-based system which is much better (for a total budget of $450 including doing my own SSD upgrade). Both machines are Asus. If you want to use an IDE, make sure you also get a big enough screen for it. If all you need from Linux is Bash, Cygwin will be enough.