"Explaining Computers" Lightweight Linux for older computers

In the heyday of netbooks, I ran Fedora on a Dell Mini (the 9" version if I remember correctly). The issue was display size, many Thunderbird dialogs were larger than the screen. I suspect it would be torture to go back to it now ...

The 2GB max RAM was a bit of a problem too for intensive web browsing. Although I finally gave up on mine after the original battery died, Dell didn't sell them any more, and 3 aftermarket replacements didn't work.

Theo

I did that years ago. God it was slow

Too late. Just scrapped mine the other day. I did have Linux on it, then Windows, but there weren't enough resources for it to be useful.

Better off with a Raspberry Pi.

Cheers

Dave R

Well you still need a screen and keybored. I wont go below a 64 bit 10 year old lappy with 4GB RAM and a full HD screen

EEPC is just TOO small. Better of with a mobile phone

You are s*****ng me. I have just spent many hours trying to find a "viable" 32 bit distro to put on an eee PC-701. Including all the pain of making the iso boot using ISOLINUX and you post this.

I tried AntiX, I only have 4GB of eMMC disk :-(

So Lubuntu 10.04

$ uname -a Linux eeepc701 2.6.32-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP

Andy

I have one in a case with an Analog Discovery 2 USB 'scope. It's good enough for that, but not much more.

However, when it was new, I was running with an external monitor with four terminal emulators, an editor, and an MPLAB dsPIC compiler. F*ck knows how.

If the USB port works on the machine, you could try making a Rufus stick.

In this screenshot, they use an 8GB USB stick, so naturally the persistent storage area slider value is limited in size. First the ISO has to be laid down, and then the rest of the space could be persistent storage (for homedir and packages you install).

If you used a 64GB TLC based stick, the Casper slider for persistence should go over 4GB. In the old days,

Defining a persistent storage on a TLC stick, isn't good for it, and you could wear out the stick faster than normal. But if you can spare the stick for a science experiment, it may allow you to break free of the storage limits. As an example of things you can fix, you can tell Firefox not to put cache2 on the storage (even though you don't have enough RAM for the cache to be on RAM). You may be able to turn down the Firefox cache size, so it does not become an issue.

The SLC and MLC sticks, tended to be too small for experiments like this. I have an 8GB MLC, but the persistent storage gets used up pretty quickly as you install packages and a 4GB persistent reports "full" before you know it.

Modern OSes can use a /swapfile , but I don't know what they do in the face of a USB stick with persistent partition. Putting the swap onto the internal storage might work, and every time you boot, the USB stick will find that swap partition, once you make one there. It will mount the swap for you.

I have no idea now booting works on an eeePC. Or for that matter, what won't boot on there.

Paul