Asus EEEPC + Linux

[markyb86]

Hello.

I have an ASUS EEEPC 900. (900mhz, 1gb ram, upgraded to 32gb sata ssd.)

It came with a terribly outdated debian spinoff. I have had many different OS's installed, including windows 7 and XP. XP is just terrible on it.

Right now it has Joli OS because I just wanted to see how far that distro has come.

I think Xubuntu performed the best on it so far.

I was wondering what *NIX you all run on similar hardware?

I want to try HAIKU but I can't seem to tell where the project is via the website.

I am very adept in debian based OS's for some time now. Linux Mint is a great fork.

I have tried fedora 14, xubuntu 12.04, xubuntu 11.04, kubuntu 8.04.1, linux mint 5, suse 12, and some others I cannot recall at the moment.

crunchbang is too minimal for my tastes. (however very fast)

 

[Gorgonops]

You could always try a Chromium build on it if you're so inclined. It's not spec'ed *much* lower than the weakest Chromebooks, I suppose.

(I've pondered trying it on the HP 2133 that's still kicking around the house but I sort of doubt that would end well. The Via-sourced guts in that otherwise beautiful machine cursed it to a life of requiring *way* more fiddling than any human being should be forced to tolerate to make it run well under *any* OS, Windows XP included.)

As a general rule I've installed either Xubuntu or plain-old straight-up Debian on the weakest machines I've slapped Linux on in the last few years but honestly I'm not sure I'm that sold on Xubuntu. I like the look-and-feel (mostly) of the XFCE environment but it honestly doesn't feel that "light" to me, at least when it comes with the rest of Ubuntu under it. I guess the $50 question is "what is this thing for?". Obviously a six-year old "slow when it was brand new" EEE PC isn't going to do anything modern very well. Are you looking for something disposable to use for note-taking and email, a toy to play with weird OSes on, what?

Personally I'd say go with a minimum Debian+light WM, install BasiliskII, Hatari, UAE, Stella, Atari800, VICE, and KEGS, and party like it's nineteen-ninety, er... three-ish. It should be able to manage throwing the occasional Sad Mac or Guru Meditation Error at close to full speed.

 

[markyb86]

Well since I know about it's glass ceiling and maybe what it should be able to do, it limits me to being just the easy work laptop.

I have a macbook for serious mobile computing, I suppose,

but this guy I just want to be able to email, watch an occasional avi/mpeg file, edit html/css/php, maybe tweak an image or two. nothing fancy.

last I used it to watch the entire 'walking dead ' season 3, and play words with friends ( a little slow but it was ok..)

I haven't ever tried straight debian on it, now that I think about it. it's allways been some offshoot version or fork.

last laptop i have installed vanilla debian, was etch or sarge on a Toshiba 1625cdt with 256mb ram and it did alright.

I'll probably give it a go.

really it just needs an up to date web browser (firefox preferred as I sync my bookmarks over a few machines) and a good wifi driver.

 

[RickNel]

@Marky:

watch an occasional avi/mpeg file,

That's where the hardware will limit you, whatever OS you try. Without multi-threading, the poor little thing will always struggle to handle heavy decoding plus video driving, especially if you are downloading at the same time.

Rick

 

[gobabushka]

I've finally made the complete switch to linux, and I agree, I've been a Debian/Ubuntu head for a long time. And I just installed Linux Mint 14/MATE on my Toshiba NB505. It runs like a champ, when the HD dies. I have so far gone through 2 on this damned thing!

And I at one point was a crunchbang master!

 

[theos911]

My first choice would be Debian + LXDE. Second would be Crunchbang. Third would be Xubuntu. After that I'm not too sure. LMDE? Slackware? One of the ultra light versions of openSUSE based on RazorQt or KDE4 Klyde?

 

[tecneeq]

I guess i would use it with Debian Wheezy (should be lableled as stable in the next few days) and twm. Really no need to waste memory on some sophisticated desktop environment. In case you want to try it, here is my old .twmrc:

http://www.tecneeq.de/files/dotfiles/home/karsten/_.twmrc

Twm is the old window manager that came with most X11 implementations. It was part of Xfree86 and is part of Xorg.

I would also skip a display manager like kdm or gdm and instead log in on the console and type startx (or run startx from .bash_login or .profile). A proper .xinitrc to start twm would look like that:

#!/bin/sh
# Set cursor and backgroundcolor or suffer the checkerboard pattern
xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr -solid SkyBlue4
# Start something
firefox &
# Run window manager
exec twm

I would then use firefox with it's settings/cache and whatnot in tmpfs. Also a plugin that let's you turn of the rendering of pictures and jscript.

 

[theos911]

Twm would be a solid choice, if not a pinch spartan. You could always do LXDE, even my Wallstreet does LXDE like a champ.

 

[TylerEss]

I've very much enjoyed OpenBSD on mine; XFCE runs like a champ on it under OpenBSD, though I'm still an Enlightenment junkie from back about '99.

 

[markyb86]

I am curious to try this twm now. Thanks for the config file. I'm probably going to give it a go on Monday. I'll post back with my results.

Thanks guys.

Also I forgot to mention, xfce/debian on my core i5, awesome.

 

[tecneeq]

Ahh, turns out Debian Wheezy is stable today.

 

[IPalindromeI]

I have no idea why, but I also have a .vtwmrc - with pictures!

 

[theos911]

You can also lighten the system a bit by disabling the login manager and invoking your preferred DE/WM via startx/xinit. I do that on MintPPC 9 to save some RAM/CPU Cycles.

 

[markyb86]

I'm a little confused on how to set uip TWM, so for now I'm using LXDE on Debian 7 wheezy.

It's pretty quick and I like how its working on this little guy so far. I'm changing all the fonts to "liberation sans" because it is skinnier and more letters can fit in the same space than when using "sans"

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I've been a fan of just-plain-vanilla Debian for a long time, but I've been playing with Mint and Arch more recently. They both seem decent on netbooks. Just throwing the last build of "Fuduntu" (A Fedora-base, not Ubuntu, in spite of its name) on my netbook just to see what it's like.

 

[Bunsen]

I had Arch running pretty happily on my first-gen 633MHz Eee, till half of the 4MB board-soldered flash up and died. Possibly because I forgot to configure it not to use it as a swap partition :?:

There's a media player distro I've forgotten the name of that's set up to boot from SD (it has a slot) and run in RAM; that was/is going to be my next attempt if and when I dig it out for another go.