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.
Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
81–90 of 178 posts
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#82The 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 requi…
> 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...
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#83These 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.
I wonder if that still works on Wayland WMs
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#84I 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.
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.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#85Reviving? I'm still running a 2007 EeePC 1001HA on Fedora.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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.
I use the system menu (Alt+Space) all the time, mostly because I find that closing a window via Alt+Space, C is more convenient (keys close to each other for the left hand) than Alt+F4. And then knowing that M is for move and S for size is natural.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#87These 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.
yes, some tablets (eg Dell Venue), real pita there..
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#88The 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.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#89This 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 :)
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.
Re: Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux
#90This 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
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.