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Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

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Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#21

Post by bee_rider »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #16

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 En…

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.

Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#23

Post by stasiu »

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!

Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#24

Post by andai »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #16

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 En…

> 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.

Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#25

Post by andai »

mintflow wrote: post #20

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

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 :)

Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#26

Post by theevilsharpie »

trelane wrote: post #8

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

> 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.

Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#27

Post by marttt »

achairapart wrote: post #11

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 thi…

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.

Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#28

Post by t_mahmood »

trelane wrote: post #8

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

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

Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

#29

Post by iammjm »

stasiu wrote: post #23

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 i…

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
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