This laptop was originally sold with Windows 7 32-bit edition installed. Even back then it was really unresponsive and clunky. After several years of it lying around and being useless, I decided to do a really lightweight debian install on it.

And guess what? It can do so much more than sit idly in some landfill.

Now I can use it to write my study notes in neovim (gives me a good excuse to learn vim, and I’m learning slowly), listen to music with gst123, learn c and c++, torrent large files with transmission-cli and qbittorrent, and the list goes on…

I mostly just use tty. I hit “startx i3” if I absolutely need a GUI, but for everything else, tty. I use links2 for Wikipedia, online resources and browsing memes which is already a big chunk of my internet usage. I was really giddy when I saw Tor browser had a 32-bit version, it runs surprisingly well even with less than 1 gigabyte of memory (unless I visit some really bloated sites)

I can’t play videos though, that’s the one major thing it can’t do. The integrated GPU is unsupported so playing videos or 3d-gaming is out of the question.

BTW is there a lemmy instance/frontend I can use via CLI or links2?

  • notTheCat@lemmy.ml
    7·
    19 days ago

    Are you me? I have a very similar ASUS with similar hw and it’s rocking MX 32bit, if you want more cutting edge stuff, you can switch to 32bit Void (xbps is blazing fast, but the docs aren’t Arch-wiki-quality)

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
    101·
    19 days ago

    You might wanna try out Pale Moon. It’s optimized for single-thread performance and takes up a bit less memory.

    • muhyb@programming.dev
      1·
      18 days ago

      Nah, Pale Moon won’t cut it. Even Dillo is quite slow on that hardware. qutebrowser maybe. To be fair using TUI-everything (or CLI) is the only viable way.

  • Papamousse@beehaw.org
    8·
    19 days ago

    I also have a netbook with an Atom N2600, I overclocked it from 1.6GHz to 2.0GHz, upgraded from 1GB to 3GB of RAM, and replaced the old HD with an SSD, I then installed MX Linux, 32 bits version, Xfce, and it works pretty well. Only huge webpages are slow, but everything else is about still usable

  • gramgan@lemmy.ml
    7·
    18 days ago

    I’m curious why links2 over, say, w3m? It feels like none of the terminal browsers are as nice as they could be these days…

    • maliciousonion@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      5·
      18 days ago

      I had both installed and was using them side-by-side. links2 was easier to learn and configure so I chose it over w3m, then uninstalled w3m.

      Also edit: terminal browsers(at least links2) are surprisingly good if you just want read Wikipedia, browse memes, use search engines, and other static stuff once you get the hang of it.

  • r3dw4re [null/void]@hexbear.net
    1·
    17 days ago

    I really gotta install something with dwm on my dad’s old nettop. It’s just sitting in a box for years. Gotta figure out how to work around a faulty screen tho. It’s damage by moisture on the edges, so I can’t see shit during installation

  • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    18 days ago

    I also have an old shitty computer from Acer with 4gb of RAM lying around.

    I feel a bit guilty about not using it, but I’m already sharing my time between my Surface Go 1 (daily driver) and my girlfriend’s 2012 MacBook Pro, so I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

    If anyone has an idea, I’m listening 👂

    • maliciousonion@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      4·
      18 days ago

      If it can play video at a reasonable quality, hook it up to a TV, fill it with torrented movies you want to watch and you’ll have your own home entertainment system.

      That’s one idea. If it can’t play high quality videos there are still a lot more uses for it.

    • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
      4·
      18 days ago

      Remote backup server would be my suggestion.

      Configure it with a VPN to talk to your home network and set it up at a trusted friend’s or family’s place.

      I do this with a raspberry pi and an external HDD that takes daily/weekly/monthly snapshots, with daily rsync. Works nicely for me.

  • nickb333@fedia.io
    9·
    19 days ago

    Debian is good for this. Enjoy it while there is still 32-bit support though. Edit- do you have any swap configured?

      • notthebees@reddthat.com
        8·
        18 days ago

        Id make it 2 or 3 gb. That being said, 1 gb is fine for such a light install. I have a similarly specced pentium M machine running modern debian with OpenBox. For heavier tasks, it was hitting swap (using a web browser). Upping it to 2 gb ram fixed that.

        Edit: this also came with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 gpu which probably has a bit more support than the PowerVR gpu in the Atom.