Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

https://parksb.github.io/en/article/41.html

by parksb • 8 days ago

228 172 8 days ago

parksb.github.io

russfink• 5 days ago

The article just sort of stops. Was the ram upgrade helpful? How was the mouse - was it choppy like in Windows XP as discussed at the top of the article? (And whatever happened to twm, possibly the lightest window manager around?)

bcraven• 5 days ago

"I did not expect much, and because the bottlenecks were the HDD and CPU I did not feel any noticeable performance improvement."

Sounds like it started on XP running poorly, and ended on Arch... running poorly.

DiggyJohnson• 5 days ago

would love to see twm get active again as well

2b3a514• 4 days ago

Have a look at MWM (Motif Window Manager). Colour icons (gasp) and windows that actually maximise. Packaged in Debian so I suppose around in Arch repositories somewhere.

2b3a514• 4 days ago

twm still around but might be a separate package these days and not in X11 core. CWM (Calm Window Manager) from OpenBSD is available in portable form and packaged for Debian. Very light and good for tiny screens (little decoration).

MarioMan• 5 days ago

I did the same thing with my netbook 4 years ago, but I went with Debian instead to make my life a bit easier. It was, at the time, one of a small number of distros that still officially supported x86 32-bit binaries.

The challenges came from tracking down working Wi-Fi drivers for the proprietary hardware and updating the BIOS, since the stock version has a bug where it emits lid close events that Windows XP ignores but Linux dutifully handles.

serious_angel• 5 days ago

The Community behind the marvelous project as ArchLinux32, are ineffably awesome... The project provide various options, including i496, i696, and pentium4 architectures with or without PAE requirements. The OS comes with pre-configured systemd, and supports numerous up-to-date repositories out-of-the-box. Some relatively lightweight custom window manager like Awesome or i3wm may also shape the environment if X required.

Apparently, I do still have a few photos in backups of someone's own enchanted marvel of a portal to universes powered by a Celeron D, USB pen-drive of 16 GiB, a single RAM of 1 GiB, we all managed to acquire and built, for such a short time we had!

Preview of the device: https://imgur.com/gallery/h1tWKp3

Since the CPU had no physical address extension (PAE) to electrify a more common OS, and something customary was required for the limited resources, where we chose ArchLinux 32-bit (now ArchLinux32, indeed) and arranged a custom AwesomeWM environment visually suggesting a console design just for it!

And dear... we adventured a few nights back then backed by this machine and some self-compiled emulation software, ZSnes and Gens, for the titles she had collected from a few local stores and magazines!

It was quite long ago... more than a decade and half... but it like all happened just yesterday, and how freaking awesome it was!

You likely had a similar event/memory! Please do remember these...

Related: https://www.archlinux32.org/architecture/ (The below table lists the compatibility of CPUs (identified by their available flags) with architectures...)

tommica2• 5 days ago

Beautiful little box!

anthk7• 5 days ago

For SNES I'd use Mednafen with the snes_faust core; and for difficult games to emulate I'd use the snes core. Also Mednafen works for MD/NES/GB/GBA/NGP and tons more systems.

PCSX-PGXP runs really well too, forget PGXP on that machine but at low resolution games will run fine with a simple bilinear filter. Parasiteve Eve can be damn addictive ;)

Also, text adventure games; a good one with a great history such Tristam Island it's fine too.

Also, compile Scummvm with these options from git (pacman -S scummvm, check the dependencies; run pacman -R scummvm later), then compile it with these options:

    #!/bin/sh
    export CC="clang"
    export CXX="clang++"
    export CXXFLAGS="-fpermissive -fcommon"
    export LDFLAGS="-Wl,-z,muldefs"
    export LANG=C
    make clean -j4
    env CC="clang" CXX="clang++" sh configure \
    --enable-static \
   --enable-all-engines \
    --enable-all-unstable-engines \
    --enable-release \
    --enable-plugins \
    --disable-hq-scalers \
   --disable-dlc \
   --disable-scummvmdlc \
    --disable-discord
     make CC="ccache clang" CXX="ccache clang++"   LDFLAGS+="-Wl,-z,muldefs"

justsomehnguy• 5 days ago

Preview of the device: https://imgur.com/gallery/h1tWKp3

The mobo on the pictures is a Socket AM2/2+ one, for AMD processors.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-m2n-mx-se-plus-r...

tommica2• 5 days ago

Had a few Eee machines back in the day, loved them a lot. Crazy to see them in the current time being revived.

trelane7• 5 days ago

I really miss netbooks. They were an amazing moment for Linux. No surprise Microsoft killed them.

internet20003• 5 days ago

Netbooks didn’t need Microsoft’s help in dying. Nobody bought more than one of them, the experience was that bad.

DANmode• 5 days ago

It’s much like today’s mobile experience.

Most people fall for marketing, do no deep research or consideration of their needs, and have a piss-poor time.

But some did the reading: Ubuntu on the Dell Mini 9, for example, was a dreamboat!, with or without touchscreen mod.

trelane7• 5 days ago

Netbooks didn’t need Microsoft’s help in dying.

Amazing how many of Microsoft's competitors don't need the help, yet receive it.

Nobody bought more than one of them, the experience was that bad.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/netbook-sales-exploded-i...

"The market for small and cheap laptops -- netbooks -- boomed in 2008, with almost 15 million of the things sold globally."

On the contrary, they were incredibly popular.

catdog5• 4 days ago

Netbooks didn’t need Microsoft’s help in dying. Nobody bought more than one of them, the experience was that bad.

If I remember correctly Microsoft put a limit on the HW specs for getting those cheap Windows copies while simultaneously making sure they all shipped with Windows which did not run that well on that low spec hardware. I think this is a huge part why this category died that quickly.

On the other hand there was also just general technological progress happening, "full size" notebooks were generally getting a lot more compact and lightweight so there was less need for that separate category.

sublinear2• 5 days ago

How are netbooks dead?

What's the meaningful difference between a netbook and a modern 11-inch laptop?

trelane7• 5 days ago

What's the meaningful difference between a netbook and a modern 11-inch laptop?

Being cheap, commonly available, and shipping with Linux come readily to mind.

theevilsharpie• 5 days ago

I really miss netbooks. They were an amazing moment for Linux. No surprise Microsoft killed them.

As far as cheap, low-spec, disposable laptops go, Chromebooks are the spiritual successor to netbooks.

keyringlight• 5 days ago

I'd add the move from feature phones to smart phones and later tablets. Early adopters were getting them 2007/08, 5 years on from that the platform was well on its way to maturing and with a broader range of hardware and the software ecosystem was moving to target it too. Then there's the question of what form best suits the usage the tasks the netbook audience have, if you're doing the very basic browsing/comms tasks, why take a comparatively big slab when a 4-5" will do, and if you do need a portable PC why constrain yourself to a weak system, netbooks were in no-mans-land.

PrimalPower• 2 days ago

perhaps, but chromebooks still come in laptop sizes these days. Other than a few stragglers (e.g lenovo duet), the majority of chromebooks are 12-14 inches.

If you are chasing the form factor, macbooks are serious competitors with really good battery life and tactile feel.

The beauty of netbooks was that ~10 inch form factor. Really the perfect companion device without needing a special bag to carry.

In many ways netbooks were a over a decade too early, and came right before the mobile hardware computing boom.

Netbooks are still not feasibile today, modern web design has made smaller lower res displays completely unusable today.

Tech Companies are trying to push foldable phones and tablets into this niche - but there was always something nice about a keyboard.

t_mahmood• 5 days ago

i didn't even realized they are dead, was looking for a cheap one for running my calendar server and couldn't find a single one. I had one it was really handy

abc42• 5 days ago

https://frame.work/fi/en/laptop12 is kinda close

speedgoose• 5 days ago

The netbooks were for most a lot cheaper. I think a modern equivalent is a shitty Chromebook.

trucks-refinish• 5 days ago

yikes that in a minimal configuration costs ~700 euros or whatever the currency is by default.

You could get a much more powerful system for a lot less.

catdog5• 4 days ago

Except for the price. Apart from portability and battery life a huge factor was them being (very) low cost.

nosrepa• 4 days ago

I am typing this comment from my GPD Pocket 4 with Fedora.

https://gpdstore.net/gpd-pocket-4/

achairapart3• 5 days ago

I have one of these in a closet and wondered for years about how to turn it in a distraction free word processor/simple digital typewriter.

Always loved the netbook form factor, and they were cheap!

Funny thing is that probably I also have some 2GB DDR2 stick somewhere. Last thing I need to check for is the battery, I presume it is completely down after all those years.

Anyway, this article will be very handy for this side project. Thank you!

atoav• 5 days ago

I would say, you install a lightweight Linux, boot directly into your favorite distraction free editor at full screen and sync the files back to phone and big computer via something like syncthing/Nextcloud/etc.

As for which editor that is, it depends a little bit on your needs, but there are ones specifically geared towards being distraction free like https://ghostwriter.kde.org/

Although markdown may not be what you're after. I personally consider formatting another form of distraction, ao this would be a plus for me. But if you write math-heavy papers, going with something else like Typst or LATeX may be a better choice.

achairapart3• 5 days ago

Thanks! Ghostwriter is a really good candidate. I mostly use iA Writer on my mac and they seem to share the same philosophy.

pjerem• 5 days ago

I'd install HaikuOS on it.

drdexebtjl2• 5 days ago

I tried this a while back. The main problem was that their keyboards are usually terrible.

marttt2• 5 days ago

Re: distraction free writing machine -- another option would be a FreeDOS/SvarDOS-based system: https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/04/26/build-your-o...

No kidding. Lots of fun to see a system actually boot in about 1 second.

That aside, I've installed all kinds of systems on my trusty 2009 Dell Mini 9, a fanless netbook. For years, this was a CLI-only Tiny Core Linux system, currently running SvarDOS. While on Linux, I even used it to live record 1,5-hour long radio shows via an old Mbox2 audio interface and some CLI recording software. Created a huge ramdisk just in case, but everything went well. Netbooks are weird and interesting machines.

achairapart3• 5 days ago

Thanks! This is really really tempting, but I guess this leaves Wi-Fi on the table, right?

I want to run it offline, but still be able to sync my writing on-demand when I'm done.

drdexebtjl2• 5 days ago

These 2008-2010 era netbooks are impossible to use as a desktop. They were already painfully slow when they were new, so much so that OEMs shipped them dual booting a stripped down OS.

I had an HP Mini. It had a weird 1024x600 display panel, and a lot of applications expect you to have at least 1024x768. Sometimes apps would work fine until they opened a modal that was just a bit too tall, and you had to pray that Enter or Escape did something reasonable.

A few years ago I installed Debian, qBittorrent and Samba. I figured it could handle something IO-bound. I ran it for a couple of years and then recycled it when my Internet got faster than the 100 Mbps ethernet card.

A tip if you have one of those laying around and it always ran a 32-bit OS is to check if the CPU is really 32-bit only. Only the very first Atom generation was 32-bit, but the next generations had poor 64-bit driver support on Windows, so OEMs shipped it as a 32-bit machine. Not the case for OP’s netbook, theirs is really 32-bit only.

bee_rider• 5 days ago

I had a Toshiba NB305, which apparently had an Atom N450 (just looking at some old reviews, I don’t have it running anymore). It seemed fine for basic command line stuff and some web browsing (websites already had too much JavaScript at the time but at least you could usually get away with turning it off without losing any essential functionality).

It was by far my favorite laptop I’ve ever had. I put an SSD in it, though, which made a pretty huge difference.

andai2• 5 days ago

Sometimes apps would work fine until they opened a modal that was just a bit too tall, and you had to pray that Enter or Escape did something reasonable.

Do you mean that the titlebar would be off screen so you couldn't move/close the window?

https://xkcd.com/1479/

On the Xfce desktop at least there's a nice shortcut, alt+drag with left mouse button to move any window, and alt+drag with right mouse button to resize it. That's honestly the Linux thing I miss most when using any other OS.

littlecranky67• 5 days ago

I use bettertouchtool on macos to replicate exactly that behavior (and many more).

applfanboysbgon2• 5 days ago

Windows also has shortcuts to retrieve off-screen windows, but it's more difficult to remember so I have to google it every time this situation comes up.

plqbfbv• 5 days ago

Do you mean that the titlebar would be off screen so you couldn't move/close the window?

Not just the title bar, but often also e.g. half of the settings and the Cancel/Save/Ok buttons.

Basically the screen was 600 pixels in height, but the modal was designed after 2005 so it was 768 pixels tall, and you would get a cropped modal missing maybe 10% top and 10% bottom pixels that you couldn't interact with via mouse, and you couldn't resize nor move (either because it was fixed size, or because all corners that would allow you to do so were off-screen).

miladyincontrol• 5 days ago

Some those budget atom devices were also rather annoying for having only a 32 bit uefi despite a 64 bit cpu >4GB of ram. Could still boot into a 64 bit OS, just was a bit of a confusing hiccup you'll still see people running into from time to time.

happymellon2• 5 days ago

There was also the scenario where the CPU was 64 bit but the EFI was 32 bit.

Booting a 32 bit OS was fine, but 64 bit OS' generally came with a 64 bit bootloader, so you had to do a special song and dance to load a 32 bit bootloader with a 64 bit OS.

dosisking• 5 days ago

Those cheap 2006 Mac Pros also had 32 bit EFI

CTOSian• 5 days ago

yes, some tablets (eg Dell Venue), real pita there..

jambalaya85• 4 days ago

Forgot about this. That was annoying.

spider-mario• 4 days ago

Mine (Acer Aspire One 756) had an EFI disguised as a BIOS. I only discovered it was EFI after a few years, when I inserted some bootable flash drive, opened the boot menu and saw an EFI entry for the flash drive there. Other than that, it’s as if they were trying to keep the EFI a secret (nothing in the settings hinted at it and I couldn’t get it to boot in EFI mode by default).

theodric• 4 days ago

Ah yes, my big netbook (sold as the "2006 Apple Mac Pro") was so afflicted

hnlmorg• 5 days ago

The original ones that shipped Linux were fine. It was only when Microsoft started giving away XP to Netbook OEMs to kill the desktop Linux threat that things really went bad.

People talk about modern Microsoft and how much they do for open source have such short memories. Microsoft used to do everything they can to kill open source and even referred to the ecosystem as “communism”.

aruggirello• 5 days ago

It had a weird 1024x600 display panel, and a lot of applications expect you to have at least 1024x768

On Debian at least, Alt+grab, or the window menu "move" could save your day.

HPsquared• 5 days ago

On Windows it's Alt+Space, M, arrow keys.

functionmouse• 5 days ago

I wonder if that still works on Wayland WMs

anthk7• 5 days ago

HP mini there, with ZRAM it's really fast. I use Flubox+UXTerm+a bunch of CLI/TUI tools among mpv, nsxiv and mupdf. The OS I use it's hyperbola GNU/Linux, A bit outdated but most modern stuff it's compiled from source. For gaming I have mednafen, frotz, pcsxr, Flare RPG (git), GearHead 1 and 2 and a few more. Oh, and Scummvm with games from Blade Runner to Ultima I-IV, Technobabylon, Virtuaverse, The Longest Journey, Sierra and Lucas Arts games and about... ¿2000 games more?

For the web I use DIllo and a custom build of Otter Browser against the older QT5 Webkit engine.

For web media I use streamlink and yt-dlp.

znpy2• 5 days ago

They were already painfully slow when they were new

Mostly, yes. I had an acer aspire one d250 (similar specs to that in the article) and i worked mostly okay under linux for light development work, meaning i was in high school doing java development with emacs and running apache ant by hand.

Other than that yeah they were painfully slow.

Also i bought a similar machine at a flea market for like 20€ and was sorely disappointed to find out it had a Broadcom wifi chip which is a pain to work with and i’m not really interested in buying an atheros card for another 20€.

jambalaya85• 4 days ago

The default wifi in almost all of the laptops and netbooks of the time sucked. It wasn't unique to netbooks. Especially for linux (I don't mean only not supporting promiscuous mode if you were in need of network troubleshooting tools; I mean many drivers weren't supported out of the box. If you forgot to download a driver rpm/deb file before installing, good luck. Etc.)

The external network card support was better than macbooks' though. Go figure.

walrus01• 4 days ago

The best possible use I can think of for one is disassembled and with just the screen and motherboard, running something like a full screen browser that auto refreshes a certain web page like the weather. With 1 gig of ram even the most minimal lxde or similar desktop environment is going to struggle to run a full size chromium or Firefox for anything more than one tab of browser content.

Or I suppose it could be treated like a CLI only info display panel running an ssh client and the "htop" output from a remote server.

2b3a514• 4 days ago

I'm posting this off a 2009 Samsung NC10 Netbook running antiX linux 26[1] (32 bit, debian Trixie packages but an older 5.10 series kernel) and it has Abiword running, with ROXterm and Firefox with BBC News in the other tab. The netbook has a mechanical hard drive and a gig of ram and a small but not outrageous keyboard. It jogs along OK. I dug it out of the cupboard when I saw this post.

Not a snappy experience even with the light IceWM based desktop but useable and faster than some corporate PCs I've used in educational settings in the past.

[1] antiX strikes me as a lot less work than the OAs hand crafted Arch install but the whole point is you can do what you want with free software. https://antixlinux.com/

CTDOCodebases• 4 days ago

After playing around with old spec hardware I would say before OP gives up try installing Alpine Linux.

Run Alpine Linux from RAM. That will consume about 125MB with the standard install. Set up persistence so you save changes. Install a lightweight window manager and use a lightweight browser like qutebrowser.

Even thought Alpine uses musl you can still get apps like Obsidian to run. I can't remember how though but this whole setup was usable on a PC that had a built in 56K modem.

anthk7• 4 days ago

Otter-browser will compile fine too.

Dwedit• 4 days ago

When you have a dialog window too big for the screen, you can Alt+Space to open the system menu, then activate the Move menu item, then you can use arrow keys to move the window around, even with the title bar out of bounds.

Not just for obsolete systems, sometimes a full screen application might pick a tiny desktop resolution as well, and not properly restore the resolution, so you could need to deal with a too-big dialog box in that situation as well.

Narishma3• 4 days ago

When you have a dialog window too big for the screen, you can Alt+Space to open the system menu, then activate the Move menu item, then you can use arrow keys to move the window around, even with the title bar out of bounds.

On Linux it's just Alt+drag anywhere on the window to move it.

ndiddy• 4 days ago

Another thing to keep in mind if you have an old netbook lying around is that a lot of the later models that came out after Windows 7 have PowerVR graphics (rebranded as "Intel GMA 3600") instead of the basic Intel chipset graphics. The only operating systems that will work with the GMA 3600 are 32-bit Windows 7 and whatever version of Fedora was current in 2012 (thanks to a closed source beta driver Intel released).

A tip if you have one of those laying around and it always ran a 32-bit OS is to check if the CPU is really 32-bit only. Only the very first Atom generation was 32-bit, but the next generations had poor 64-bit driver support on Windows, so OEMs shipped it as a 32-bit machine. Not the case for OP’s netbook, theirs is really 32-bit only.

A lot of netbooks will lock the CPU into 32-bit mode in the BIOS, so getting them to boot a 64-bit OS also requires patching the BIOS. It's doable but has limited benefits when they're limited to 2-4 GB of RAM anyway.

hedgehog• 4 days ago

The VAIO P and some Panasonic rugged handhelds have those chips, both interesting machines, I think it would be possible to write a modern Mesa driver for those but it would be a lot of work.

catdog5• 4 days ago

It's doable but has limited benefits when they're limited to 2-4 GB of RAM anyway.

Back in the day there was no real benefit. Today it's different as most Linux distros don't really care much about supporting 32 bit anymore.

kasabali• 4 days ago

Someone should vibe reverse that driver

1vuio0pswjnm75• 4 days ago

"These 2008-2010 era netbooks are impossible to use as a desktop."

I used one as a replacement for a "desktop computer" for 7+ years

Here, "desktop" means the form factor not the interface

I used NetBSD as the OS. I never tried to use Windows. It was during this time that I stopped using X11 entirely, i.e., no "desktop" metaphor, no terminal emulator programs, and began staying in VGA textmode 100% of the time

If I needed to view graphics I sent the files to another computer running graphical OS on the LAN but not connected to the internet. At the time, this was mainly an iPad

As a matter of practice I never connected Apple computers to the internet

These ASUS netbooks indeed had a slow processor but the amount I accomplished with this computer was substantial. I created bootable USB sticks that booted to rootfs in RAM and never touched disk, an immutable, custom OS that resembles ChromeOS today, but better (no Chrome or other software written and controlled by an adtrech corporation). I could pull out the stick after boot and use the USB port for something else.^1 NetBSD kernels compiled quickly enough and I did not use QEMU for testing

1. It was perplexing to me to read about the problems people had with SD cards when the RaspberryPi appeared. I pull the SD card out after boot, the OS runs entirely from RAM

I still have this netboook. There is some issue with the power. I have thought about trying to fix it

1vuio0pswjnm75• 4 days ago

*adtech

dannyw• 3 days ago

Could I ask for more information about the specs of the machine you had? Curious what processor, how much RAM it had, and what you did for storage (did you expand it / use external drives?)

Fascinated by your experiences here!

1vuio0pswjnm75• 3 days ago

CPU Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz

Memory 512MB DDR2 667MHz

Storage 160GB SATA

10.1" screen. For me, this was great in VGA textmode

I prefer to keep OS and personal data separate (This is one important difference from ChromeOS that appeared a few years later)

The USB stick contained OS only, HDD was used for data storage only, if at all. For example, I might not use the HDD at all, leaving it as is when I bought the computer. or I might use the HDD to store public data like public zone files

I primarily used external drives for personal data storage (This is another important difference from ChromeOS, no "cloud" storage)

As such, when the computer eventually dies, I have the OS on USB stick and data on external drives, easily portable to new computers

aapoalas• 4 days ago

I had an HP Mini 5102 and I absolutely loved it! I actually revived it a few years ago and used it for some modern programming tasks. I think I tried to compile rustc on it once and had to leave it on for the night, coming back to it in the morning and finding that it had just frozen fully.

Unfortunately its CMOS battery ran out and when I went in to replace it I had to unplug a few ribbon cables which of course promptly snapped the now-brittle plastic connectors. Its been sitting on a shelf waiting to be revived once again ever since... I miss that little thing.

prmoustache2• 4 days ago

These 2008-2010 era netbooks are impossible to use as a desktop.

Impossible is not the correct word. But one need to have lower expectation, favor lighterweight (tui or cli) apps whenever possible, avoid the ADriddledweb, etc.

The main point is there is very little reason to do that because by now most of these old netbooks batteries are dead which remove the advantage of their form factor as you cannot bring them everywhere as you used to and you can get a cheap second hand laptop or desktop with a larger screen, a much better keyboard, 8gb pf ram and a much better cpu for very little money these days.

mintflow• 5 days ago

Linux can really unlock old hardware well, and glad it work great on 32bit systems

Recently retired my pc with fx6300 because it take too much desktop space; and just setup a mini pc with j6412, also installed arch Linux, i3wm for desktop stuffs

Also find a old usb Bluetooth receiver make it play some music

It works great and use this new setup to get a Agent free experience

andai2• 5 days ago

What's the last part referring to? Isn't all Linux agent free by definition? Or do you mean, compared to windows?

I am running agents on my ten year old ThinkPad T460. I gave them their own user account, to limit blast radius, but I haven't had any issues with them nuking things yet. (Except for my code quality...)

Well, maybe my API keys with $5 credit have been exfiltrated though. The world may never know :)

codelion• 5 days ago

I use a 2010 Macbook Air with Linux XFCE desktop and it works well for browsing and simple office work.

stasiu4• 5 days ago

This brings back memories. I loved my Asus Eee PC 1215p. Bought it with my own money. It was the computer I had when I was moving out of my parental home when I was 20 y/o. When I moved out I had Ubuntu installed on it, but in my student room I realised I had issues with connecting to the internet somehow. Went back to my moms and installed back Windows 7, with the Windows 98 look-and-feel-setting which was a built in option, great user experience. The last Windows machine I even used, but it was amazing. I brought it with me on my hitch hiking adventures through Europe, was using it to DJ using my personal iTunes library in a Polish hippie/hacker/eco village I was staying at. Eventually I stupidly broke the keyboard my cleaning it with a wet towel when it was on, I still feel bad about that really. What a machine, I absolutely loved it!

iammjm• 5 days ago

I too had it and remember it fondly, it got me through my studies. Very portable machine. I eventually swapped it for a thinkpad which I loved even more. Now I’m with a MacBook Air for the time being, but I think I’ll get another thinkpad when the time comes

stasiu4• 5 days ago

After this Eee PC I bought a 2014 MacBook Pro, again amazing machine. Used it through out my CS studies and beyond. After that I had some different machines from my employers but my personal laptop is a ThinkPad t480s, nice machine for Linux.

jambalaya85• 4 days ago

I miss the form factor of the old netbooks. The 2gb swappable to generally up to 4gb ram was really never great, though was fine with linux as long as you set your swap partition up correctly, though I wouldn't be expecting much in the way of running things like virtualbox or any modern IDE. The 32bit support only was fine then, not now (and with only 2-4gb ram, you didn't want 64bit anyway).

Perfectly adequate for most web dev, scripting, blogging, chatting, network stuff, remote systems administration, etc.

The old netbooks took handling less carefully much more well than anything now other than probably an Apple laptop (I mean, if it fell, odds are it wouldn't break as easily; the ones with hard drives, maybe not as well, but it took more than once; talking the screen and keyboard).

I imagine this is why you liked it. Easy to backpack with.

They were also great for running out for coffee and working without schlepping a full-sized laptop.

I mean the ones with hard drives, not the ones with teeny tiny ssd's. Hard to do much on those, and slower.

Is crunchbang still around?

ostros• 5 days ago

Would you mind sharing few words about the village you mentioned? I am from Poland and am really curious what that village was :)

stasiu4• 5 days ago

The place is called Atelier Wolimierz, but it was technically located in the village of Pobiedna, Lower Silesia. Next to the old Wolimierz train station. I was there in 2014. They converted a small airplane hanger in a “earth ship”. The place was pretty wild though at the time, very anarchy vibes, but it was an amazing time. I learned some Polish there and later back home (The Netherlands) I met my Polish wife with this limited Polish knowledge. Have been to Poland many many times ever since! I would actually love to move there with my wife and our daughter.

Dathuil• 4 days ago

I used my eee PC for my final year project in college. How I didn't get rsi on that keyboard I'll never know.

We moved house recently and I found it in a box when I was unpacking. Maybe I should find a use for it

antihero• 4 days ago

Ahh, I started my freelance career on a Portege R100 running Arch back in the day. The amount of times I missed meetings because of X11 failing to run or wpa_supplicant shitting the bed...

ezst2• 5 days ago

Did my whole engineering curriculum as my single computer, ran MATLAB and other JVM GUIs/IDEs on 1GB RAM/Atom N450. The build and display were horrendous, but that was a good companion to take notes during lectures and in the lab.

embedding-shape• 5 days ago

Similarly, I was hacking on a tiny netbook before I was a professional programmer, everything about it was awful, the keyboard was Norwegian and it was missing some keys, but eventually I managed to build up enough of a portfolio with it that I got my first internship and eventually got hired. Old photo (2013) of it, running Kubuntu (Xubuntu maybe even?) at this point I think: https://i.imgur.com/1NRIZrg.jpeg

ezst2• 5 days ago

Haha, same vibe! Mine was running mandrake/mandriva + kde. Also programming on such a low specced device gave a superpower (and good coding hygiene): you would immediately spot memleaks and inefficient code because you would feel it as entire seconds of slowness and unresponsiveness. Like, none of my GUI apps had work happening on the event thread, but I could immediately tell which ones would.

ramgine• 4 days ago

Unrelated to your post (I missed those form factors) but has imgur become enshittified too? If I try to zoom in on your picture it gives me a popup I can’t clear telling me to install the app. Sad.

cjfd• 5 days ago

I kept my old laptop (bought in 2007) alive for quite a while too. But last year I finally retired it. I also used archlinux 32 which worked fine for a while. But at some point the breakages really got too bad. I was using xfce4. For a while the xfce4-terminal was broken and would not start. That has the easy workaround of using xterm instead. But there were more breakages and it just started taking too much time. Quite a bit of software is ditching, or has ditched, 32-bit support.

jbl0ndie• 5 days ago

I bought a subsidised Windows EeePC 901 and stuck Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. Much more useable. Windows was laughably bad. It limited the number of open applications!

There was also a EeePC specific https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyPeasy which was even better.

Since then I have installed various things for amusement, including a cut down Chromebook OS and the OLPC Linux. The limit was always the tiny root partition (4GB SSD). I had some limited success joining with the second SSD (16GB) using btrfs.

I think the albeit tiny SSD was this machine's saving grace compared to HDD models, in terms of speed.

teekert• 5 days ago

I would still be using my 1000HE if the mouse and power buttons hadn’t stopped working (would have put an ssd in it then). Sure the keyboard keys are a bit wobbly but otherwise I really loved that machine. Nice form factor. Would love to be able to get a new 400$-ish 10-11” netbook with 6+ hour battery that would fly with some minimal Linux. Recommendations?

alterom2• 5 days ago

I had the 1000HE too, and ran everything from LaTeX to DAWs on it.

The only serious contender in that category now IMO is Chuwi Minibook X.

internet20003• 4 days ago

Compromise a little bit on the size (but not much, considering bezels!) and $~400 gets you a 100x better computer https://www.ebay.com/itm/145639218896

all2• 5 days ago

My current laptop is a 15 year old freebie from work. It does everything I need it to. Except for run all the boosted agent frameworks. It chokes on open code, Claude Code, I don't dare try codex.

applfanboysbgon2• 5 days ago

Codex CLI is written in Rust and significantly more efficient than Claude Code. I had no trouble running it on a 2012 laptop. VSCode/standard browsers were the main problem software, as one would expect.

tmp104232884423• 5 days ago

And you can remote control it from the Codex Desktop app (now the new ChatGPT app) or from the ChatGPT mobile app.

neuropacabra• 5 days ago

It was Acer EEE 1000HA (very similar to the one from this article) which made me to use Linux. Eventually even a new one under XP was terribly slow. To that moment I was quite enjoying Windows but this device opened a door into computers for me. I never used Windows again and learned a ton by building GMA950 drivers as they were not shipped with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (omg). On one had terrible device on other hand I guess I wouldn’t start using Linux/macos and learned how to code. So lucky device, I guess?

alterom2• 5 days ago

Asus, not Acer :)

They pioneered the netbook with the EeePC line.

Sadly, they didn't keep it alive.

globular-toast• 5 days ago

I have a 17 year old Dell Mini 9 that's never seen Windows in its life. Was one of the first laptops I could find that didn't have the Windows tax. I put Gentoo on it several years ago, which took a few days, I wonder if the binaries come in 32 bit nowadays.

While most things ran absolutely fine, Firefox ran like crap, which really makes you realise how awful the modern web is.

When I got the netbook I had dreams of hacking in Emacs wherever I went. The tiny keyboard makes that quite uncomfortable, though. So it was only really used as a music player and web browser while traveling a few times, basically what you'd use a phone for today.

microtonal• 5 days ago

Was one of the first laptops I could find that didn't have the Windows tax.

In the early/mid 2000s, we used to buy computers, install Linux and then ask Dell etc. to refund the Windows license, which often worked.

My girlfriend at the time got a Dell desktop really cheap that way. IIRC it cost something like 400 or 500 Euro and Dell refunded ~100 Euro for not using the Windows license. I never really understood the economics, because installing Windows was probably profitable for them due to the adware shipped with Windows.

Probably it was easier/better for them to just give a refund to noisy Linux users than to admit that they were making big bucks on all the crap shipped with the Windows installation.

As an aside, at the time a lot of HP laptops could be purchased with FreeDOS and I think Lenovo was similar.

b800h• 5 days ago

I loved my Eee PC - I'd use it to program on the bus, train, or on a plane, but for me they were killed off by a combination of smartphones, and getting a driving license. Some years back I bought a new battery for mine, and reinstalled Linux, but I just couldn't find a use for it.

MayeulC2• 5 days ago

I still use my Samsung n130, though I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit (there were a few pain points with Arch 32 in the early days, I tried guix but it was too slow and guix uses a lot of RAM during updates).

It works decently, is sufficient for ssh-ing into other hosts. Though web browsing is a pain. I used to mostly use Dillo and elinks, MPV+yt-dlp for videos.

Unfortunately I left it sit for a bit too long and the battery is dead now. I'm thinking of fixing it and upgrading the power port to USB-C. Sometimes I also think about building a compute module-based motherboard for it.

There were interesting bits in the setup (blacklisting defective RAM addresses for instance), maybe I should make a short writeup :)

SuspectTurtle• 21 hours ago

I am very attached to my n130 and still use it daily. I'm still running Debian 12 because they dropped 32bit support for 13. Coupled with i3 window manager and i get by with it. If you do attempt a USB-C mod let me know how it goes! It's something I've also considered.

MayeulC2• 10 hours ago

Sure! I ordered the necessary part years ago, but didn't get around to do it yet. Having someone else interested may finally motivate me.

Please leave some contact info on your HN profile (or use mine), so that I can let you know.

ocd• 5 days ago

I guess there aren't that many options anymore for x86, but for really old amd64 I've been using Void Linux recently. It's not too bad even for non-technical users if they're provided an alias/function file to source in shell (with obvious naming conventions like "upgrade" or something.)

jordand• 5 days ago

I tried reviving my Asus Eee PC 1015PEM (1.5GHz dual core, 2GB RAM) and even running Linux Mint was a bit much for it (basic tasks were slow, and Wine had too much overhead for games). I initially tried upgrading the Windows 7 Starter to Windows 10, and while the upgrade did work...it was failing to even log in! Whole thing just seemed stalled.

anthk7• 5 days ago

For games Mednafen and PCSXR do wonders; and SCummvm itself supports tons of graphical and text adventures (even modern ones such as Technobabylon) and tons of source ports (and recompilations such as Super Mario 64) will run fine with just the bundled GL 2.1 adapter.

Instead of Mint I'd pick something like Alpine Linux with LXQT:

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/LXQt

Also, adding ZRAM will fly on that machine.

Also, you can build SCUMMVM (install alpine-sdk, get the alpine ports and edit the pkg build file so scummvm gets compiled with these options at the configure build stage:

    #!/bin/sh
    sh configure \
  --enable-static \
  --enable-all-engines \
   --enable-all-unstable-engines \
   --enable-release \
   --enable-plugins \
   --disable-hq-scalers \
  --disable-dlc \
  --disable-scummvmdlc \
   --disable-discord

With these options even Macromedia Director stuff will run (maybe Encarta 95 and the like) and modern games such as Technobabylon, Thimbleweed Park and so on.

Narishma3• 4 days ago

Zswap is better than ZRAM for this use case. ZRAM is only really interesting in situations where you don't want any swap to disk, like when running on an SD card or something.

lproven2• 5 days ago

You went the wrong direction. Go older, not newer.

After trying dozens of lightweight Linuxes with disappointing results, I downgraded my Sony Vaio P to WinXP. This has full GPU acceleration on Intel Pouslbo and for XP the machine's 2GB of RAM is spacious. Sad, but there we are.

Narishma3• 4 days ago

Mint is too big for something like this. You should go for something lighter weight like Alpine or NetBSD.

wazoox• 5 days ago

I think Slackware would have been a good fit, and much easier to install :)

lproven2• 5 days ago

Nah. Alpine, or TinyCore. Much smaller: Slackware is biiiiig.

prmoustache2• 4 days ago

Honestly netbsd is usually my os of choice in that kind of projects.

shlokkshahh• 5 days ago

ya all should i get arch?

anthk7• 5 days ago

Add zram:

    #!/bin/sh
     modprobe zram
     if [ -e /dev/zram0 ]
      then
      echo "zram0 on"
      exit 1 
      fi
      zramctl --find --size 512M 
      mkswap /dev/zram0
      swapon -p 99 /dev/zram0

Run the script as root.

mkesper• 5 days ago

Do not run Ubuntu on these old machines, use plain Debian instead (no fat desktop needed, no overhead due to braindead snap packaging etc.). Xfce4 should be fine. SSDs help and also using zswap to counter the low RAM. The last official install media for 32bit (first Intel Atoms) is bookworm but updating is no problem.

wegwerf17377382• 5 days ago

I had Edubuntu with XFCE and Chicago95 theme on one of those until I gave it away last year.

It ran Octoprint for me :)

trencedamp• 5 days ago

Still, it occurred to me that it might be fun to take the netbook completely apart and start replacing its hardware piece by piece.

Is it just me or did it end on a cliffhanger? That's the last line!

Findecanor• 5 days ago

The other day, I tried the latest Kubuntu on a Samsung netbook from 2011. It was impossibly slow, and Wayland did not even render colours correctly on the screen.

twic• 5 days ago

Reviving? I'm still running a 2007 EeePC 1001HA on Fedora.

cgyvbunji• 5 days ago

Yeah, installing a newer OS on an old computer you already have is a low effort blog post genre that always seems to be unreasonably popular here.

Though, I don't want to hate on it per se, we all had to start somewhere.

TiredOfLife• 5 days ago

The problem with installing Arch on netbooks is that Arch needs internet to install. Some of netbooks have horrendous wifi. I have a Cherry Trail tablet. It has a quite good looking 1280x800 screen. it would be great as typewriter/background video machine, but the wifi and the sd card constantly disappear and reappear.

regexorcist• 5 days ago

Arch is also great for Intel macbooks around that age.

UncleSlacky• 4 days ago

You should run something like Void, Alpine or antiX on these. HaikuOS also runs really well on them if you don't need actual Linux.

hamper6532• 4 days ago

OpenBSD can do wonders on a machine like this.

SoftTalker• 4 days ago

Maybe. Current OpenBSD is a bit more demanding on RAM and disk space, like everything else. But if you took a release from 10 years ago (if you can find one) it might do very well.

You could try to install a stripped-down OpenBSD but you'll find very little help if something doesn't work. "You didn't install the full OS, you're on your own" is the response you'd be most likely to get.

bArray• 4 days ago

I did not expect much, and because the bottlenecks were the HDD and CPU I did not feel any noticeable performance improvement. Still, it occurred to me that it might be fun to take the netbook completely apart and start replacing its hardware piece by piece.

I would look at swapping out the HDD for something solid state - lighter, less power, higher performance for random R/W.

Then it's just a case of lightening the load of the CPU as much as possible, strip out everything that is not needed.

I've run modern Firefox on much lighter devices. One of my netbooks is the same spec as this, and I do browsing + coding on it easily.

bdcravens• 4 days ago

I could not remember whether the machine had gotten even slower, or whether it had always been like this and I had once thought even this was fast.

In addition to the usual suspects (aging hardware, planned obsolescence, bad memories), I wonder how much CPU is burned by software trying to talk to long dead backends and the retry loops and errors that occur as a result.

lizardking• 4 days ago

This machine is a good candidate for Damn Small Linux. I've put DSL on much older machines with a full snappy GUI experience.

93n3• 4 days ago

I still run, and am writing this from, a 16-or-17 year old Dell E6510 (i5-540) that serves as my "around the house" computer. The battery life (with a huge 9 cell that protrudes out the back) isn't great, and it's hot and heavy, but with 8GiB of RAM and an SSD it works pretty well on Trixie with Cinnamon.

My main machine is a 13 year old Lenovo y510p running Debian and KDE. You'd be hard-pressed to tell that it's anywhere near that age.

The only aspect that has been annoying with both is graphics. Both machines are nvidia and are long past their support periods. The y510p has SLI (one graphics card is in the CD drive slot) which never worked on Linux. When removing the second card, the on-processor Intel graphics can be used, which have better support than nvidia, so I stick with that. I don't do anything graphics intensive anyway.

The biggest upgrade with old computers, without any doubt, is an SSD. I still remember getting my first one back in about 2011, a used 60GiB OCZ Vertex, and it was truly magic seeing the computer boot to the desktop in a few seconds even on a core 2 duo.

ColdStream• 4 days ago

I am in the same boat as you. I run a T400 from 2009. It would have been fairly high end for the time (2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM) and I think that is why it has held up so well.

As now, there is a very wide performance profile for machines around then. From sub Ghz Celerons up to 3Ghz plus dual core things.

93n3• 3 days ago

I'd expect your T400 is similar to my E6510 in terms of construction since they're both business machines from the same era. The E6510 is a tank. The hinges are still solid and there's no wear on the keyboard. There's a single panel, held on by just a single screw, that pops off on the bottom to expose the majority of user-replaceable parts.

It'd be useless with Windows, but works great with Linux. The only issue I have is severe lag on google maps.

93n3• 3 days ago

Tangentially, my home server is a slightly newer NUC with a toy of a celeron N3050. That runs great for the overwhelming majority of use cases, too. The only obviously slow operations are anything heavily CPU-bound, like compiling (esphome) and photo indexing (photoprism). In the latter case, I run it at night on a cron, so it's not really an issue in practice.

alexpotato• 4 days ago

One use of these old laptop/netbooks is to have an always on server that can even survive a power outage of a couple hours (due to the onboard battery).

As others have mentioned, the RAM is really low for a desktop but perfectly fine for running a FTP/File/PiHole etc and are usually more powerful than a RaspberryPi.

They also have multiple USB A ports if you want to add storage, ethernet etc.

zenoprax• 4 days ago

On this netbook, which has 1GB of RAM, if you keep the swap partition small you will run into “No space left on device” errors all the time.

The author doesn't explain why but I'm guessing this is because `/tmp` is filling up. Setting a quota on this mount point would help limit the impact that badly behaving programs might have on RAM usage.

lynguist2• 4 days ago

I don't understand the unwarranted and ongoing care and enthusiasm for this category of e-waste that was forcibly put upon us.

They came out in 2008, were sold until 2010, had literally less performance than a 2000 Pentium III CPU, were lauded from pundits left and right, and probably the school/hand-me-down laptops of that age (like today's e-waste class Chromebooks).

Especially when Acer and whatever had proper laptops with proper Intel SU-class CPUs and 3-4 GB RAM for the same price.

I disliked these "netbooks" back then and still do, and all that followed its footsteps, including the "laptop"-lookalikes with 32 GB e-MMC storage some mobile carriers would give out with their plans.

It's a disrespectful destitute class of computing.

I know that the Raspberry Pis came out later, but a Raspberry Pi 2 is a hundred times better engineered and well-rounded product, that will also run a desktop better than these netbooks (or at all).

On a related note, I also have colleagues at work who will run only sub-200 dollar smartphones and enjoy living the proper Nigeria/Bangladesh experience from 1-2 years ago. I also know that they don't use heating at home, and do everything in the name of efficiency.

nunez2• 4 days ago

If you needed a cheap, light laptop at the time, this was your only option. The MacBook Air came out two years later.

hamper6532• 4 days ago

It was cheap, small and light.

greggsy• 4 days ago

The eee-pc was amazingly attractive in a time when laptops were heavy.

I used to carry one in my toolbox when I worked as a network field tech.

meristohm• 4 days ago

Do you understand the unbridled desire to consume a massive amount of resources to move a human body in a multi-ton knobby-tyred truck from home to school to work to grocery store and back, and to play the flashiest games, to wear shorts inside during the winter, and to talk to robots as if they are friends? I understand that desire, and how, with billions of people having access to such power over enough time, we are now "enjoying" extreme weather more frequently, killing so much other life with our pollution, and harming ourselves in the process? And, because that is stressful to face, many of us are inclined to dive back into the consumption cycle for distraction and diversion?

I'd argue my quality of life is higher for using only hand-me-down phones (current one is ~8yo, thanks to LineageOS) because when I'm feeling dysregulated I run out of phone-based distractions really quickly (I don't allow JavaScript, and I don't install any games). I'm healthier for walking and cycling everywhere within ~16km of home (privileged to live in the city, as expensive as it has become, but I'd still do it if I lived further out), and for using heating & cooling only to take the edge off the outside temperature (16C in the winter, 26C in the summer), mindful of where all this energy comes from, what the effects are at scale, and the quality of life of future generations long after I'm dead. I don't do all this for efficiency, but for effectiveness (that of my body, my default mobility and data-processing machine) and consuming a reasonable amount of energy rather than one that, at scale, will burn my house down.

Regarding not-yet e-waste, some people just like tinkering, and the challenge of getting old hardware to still function as a useful tool.

I also understand the reaction to other people's "nonsense"; I sometimes go there, too, and it's an ongoing effort to reel it back to what I can reasonably control.

Is it helpful to have all this spelled out for you?

lynguist2• 2 days ago

Yes, I understand. I wrote it in a too polemic and dismissive way but what I wanted to say is:

- there's a type of "puritan" people that is outright against enjoyment (if not "deserved") (I think you understand what I mean even if I don't go in detail) (and this type of people can often be extremely effective engineers and also managers)

- and that there's a type of engineering that makes disproportionately bad outcomes like a price point that is let's say 15% cheaper but a performance that is 80% lower, and that that shouldn't be lauded

herbst2• 4 days ago

I basically had the choice between this and no laptop at the time ...

nunez2• 4 days ago

Not directly related to the article, but I've got to give it up to Tesla for continuing to eek out every last ounce of performance from the Atoms they used for 2018-2021 Model 3 car computers. They still push updates to the UI for these cars nine years later, albeit with some stuff feature flagged out.

channel_t• 4 days ago

I had one of these and loved it, taking it everywhere. I vaguely remember it running some flavor of Linux that was pretty usable at the time. Sometime in 2012 the display started having issues and then it stopped powering on shortly thereafter. I would spend the next decade trying to recreate something resembling the experience through Chromebooks but never really getting there, eventually surrendering to the 13-inch MacBook Air.

herbst2• 4 days ago

Same here! I still have it in has tiny laptop bag, back then it worked wonderfully for me as a mobile Linux development machine. I had more battery lifetime than with ANY machine after that (10+ hours screen time), but to fair I only run the bare minimum on it.

However the charging broke and I never got around trying to repair it.

Nexxxeh• 4 days ago

I loved my Netbook. Acer Aspire One.

The early ~2008 Linux-supplied dirt cheap Acer Aspire One A110L netbooks came with small (8GB?) and horrifically slow SSDs.

Back in the days of such things, we'd upgrade the RAM and use Windows XP with the write filter to make them great little machines. There was an SD card slot in the side that would happily store files.

The SSDs were very limited in read-write cycles from what I remember. More noticeable they brutally slow at writing. By shoving all the writes into RAM instead of direct the SSD, everything ran more smoothly.

If you wanted to keep any changes (usually due to OS or software updates) then you ran a batch file that wrote out the changes to the SSD before shutdown. Otherwise you shut the machine down and all your changes were immediately forgotten.

RAM Upgrade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3WVb1dL--o Enhanced Write Filter: https://www.prime-expert.com/articles/a04/speeding-up-ssd-ba...

It was more than fast enough for the time, the form factor was perfect for my teenage hands (not that they're much bigger now) and it was cheap and small enough to drag everywhere with me. (I copied and pasted some of that from a previous comment of mine about it.)

ValdikSS• 4 days ago

If you really want to revive the machine, here are my tips and tricks

https://github.com/parksb/parksb.github.io-comments/issues/2...

nickjj• 4 days ago

I like how efficient Arch is, in the sense that you have nothing and now you get to pick and choose what you want.

My main desktop I use for full time software development and video editing is from 2014. I've run Windows on it forever. I put Arch on it ~8 months ago.

A full desktop environment I put together based on niri boots at 1.1 GB of memory. Every app I want is installed (tons of CLI tools, various GUI tools, Docker, video editors, browser, etc.) all together comes in at 10 GB of disk total for everything based on what `df -h` says for my root partition.

My machine does have 16 GB of memory so I'm not pressed for memory, but it's nice to know the machine runs on a system designed to not be bloated.

After switching from Windows 10 Pro, it felt like I got a hardware upgrade. Things open faster and generally speaking everything just feels snappier.

As an aside, it was super fun spending a few days setting everything up in a repeatable way which I've now replicated on a number of systems with https://github.com/nickjj/dotfriedrice.

kiddico• 4 days ago

Dotfriedrice is a great repo name

catdog5• 4 days ago

I owned a Samsung NC10 which had a non-shitty keyboard as its outstanding feature. Was a nice little Linux machine I used a lot. Only bad thing, those Intel Atom N2xx CPUs are just awfully slow, even back then.

Today realistically I don't think it really makes that much sense to bother with those devices even for small home servers. You can e.g. get used thin clients for cheap which run circles around those old CPUs and support way more RAM while likely being as power efficient if not more. At the bare minimum I would avoid using any 32 bit x86 CPU for running anything modern, even Debian dropped official support for that architecture now.

gattilorenz• 4 days ago

The Asus 1000H served me well for my whole bachelor, and also became my first hackintosh with the glorious 10.6.8, iDeneb flavor (i even bought a new wifi card natively supported by Mac OS X for that).

I still have it, it still holds a charge. Amazing little machine, portability and usage time were really top notch (not so the performance, but I was patient, and even used it for Sketchup and Illustrator)

Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

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