I really miss netbooks. They were an amazing moment for Linux. No surprise Microsoft killed them.
https://frame.work/fi/en/laptop12 is kinda close
The netbooks were for most a lot cheaper. I think a modern equivalent is a shitty Chromebook.
Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
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Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#72These 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…
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.
Those cheap 2006 Mac Pros also had 32 bit EFI
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#73I 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.
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.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#74I think Slackware would have been a good fit, and much easier to install :)
Nah. Alpine, or TinyCore. Much smaller: Slackware is biiiiig.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#75This 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…
Would you mind sharing few words about the village you mentioned? I am from Poland and am really curious what that village was :)
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#76I really miss netbooks. They were an amazing moment for Linux. No surprise Microsoft killed them.
https://frame.work/fi/en/laptop12 is kinda close
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.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#77These 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…
> 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.
On Windows it's Alt+Space, M, arrow keys.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#78> 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!
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#79These 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…
> 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€.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 incred…
Yes, they seemed like a good idea - they were really cheap, and had decent battery life for the time - but the compromises were such that you really wouldn’t want to buy another netbook if you could. After the first few releases, the MacBook Air became what the non-cheapskate buyers of netbooks wanted.
> compromises were such that you really wouldn’t want to buy another netbook if you could.
This is directly contradicted by the existence of Netbook fans.