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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

#151

Post by ColdStream »

93n wrote: post #115

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 any…

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.

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

#152

Post by catdog »

ndiddy wrote: post #114
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…

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).…

> 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.

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

#153

Post by SoftTalker »

hamper653 wrote: post #97

OpenBSD can do wonders on a machine like this.

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.

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

#154

Post by gattilorenz »

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)

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

#155

Post by trelane »

internet2000 wrote: post #111
trelane wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How many of those are there? How many compared to the 15 million (mostly) first-and-only-time buyers? Netbooks are almost unique in tech history in how flash-in-the-pan they were. Crypto somehow had more staying power.

The parent was speaking in absolutes, that beyond just didn't work for anybody. A handful of examples is more than sufficient to disprove it.

On the other hand, you're arguing that the majority didn't buy it again. I've not seen any proof one way or the other. Do you have some?

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

#156

Post by trelane »

catdog wrote: post #143
abc42 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

And shipping with Linux installed.

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

#157

Post by trelane »

sublinear wrote: post #146
trelane wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I was implying that the answer has to be nostalgia. Ewaste didn't stop being produced some time in the early 2010s. There's always newer ewaste to look at. You can buy more modern laptops made as recently as 2020 that are at least an order of magnitude better in every single way (even including weight) on Amazon and eBay for about $150 USD. They're lightly used and all hardware is supported without any fuss including…

> You do have to install Linux yourself though.

I said "for Linux" for a reason

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

#158

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #122
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…

"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 n…

*adtech

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

#159

Post by happymellon »

dosisking wrote: post #72
happymellon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Polycarbon Macbooks too.

I remember creating the special boot disks with 32bit grub.

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

#160

Post by theodric »

happymellon wrote: post #45
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…

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.

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