It’s often said these days that computers don’t become outdated nearly as quickly as they did in the past, with even a decade-old computer still more than capable of handling daily tasks for the average person. Testing that theory, [Igor Ljubuncic] revisited the Asus eeePC which he purchased back in 2010. Although it’s not specified exactly which model it is, it features an Intel Atom N450 (1 core, 2 threads) running at 1.67 GHz, 1 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 and a 250 GB HDD, all falling into that ultra-portable, 10.1″ Netbook category.
When new, the netbook came with Windows 7 Starter Edition, which [Igor] replaced with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04, which was its own adventure, but the netbook worked well and got dragged around the world on work and leisure assignments. With increasingly bloated updates, Ubuntu got replaced by MX Linux 18, which improved matters, but with the little CPU struggling more and more, [Igor] retired the netbook in 2019. That is, until reviving it recently.
Upon booting, the CMOS battery was of course empty, but the system happily continued booting into MX Linux. The Debian update repositories were of course gone, but changing these to the archive version allowed for some (very old) updates. This raised the question of whether modern Linux would even run on this ancient Atom CPU, the answer of which turned out to be a resounding ‘yes’, as MX Linux still offers 32-bit builds of its most recent releases. A 15 minute upgrade process later, and a 2 minute boot later, the system was running a Linux 6.1 kernel with Xfce desktop.
As for the performance, it’s rather what you expect, with video playback topping out at 480p (on the 1024×600 display) and applications like Firefox lacking the compact density mode, wasting a lot of screen space. Amazingly the original battery seems to still deliver about half the runtime it did when new. All of which is to say that yes, even a ‘low-end’ 2010-era netbook can still be a very usable system in 2024, with a modern OS.
Nice !
I would like these device to be sold again (with updated hardware). From my point of view, smartphones are are too big as phones, and too small as computers, and having one that can run a linux distro is hard to find (ubuntu touch for example).
BTW, for viewing application that requires a bigger resolution (such as FireFox), I would suggest the use of xrandr with the scale option (if the graphic card supports it):
$ xrandr –output [your_output_device] –scale 1.875×1.4063
with [your_output_device] be the output device given by “xrandr -q”
Would give a virtual resolution of 1.41024=1920 x 1.4063768=1080
Doh … I didn’t realize that asterisks would be interpreted in my formula :/
=> virtual resolution would be 1920 (1.4×1024) x 1080 (1.4063×768)
Termux makes smartphones substantially more tolerable, fwiw. You can even run X. It’s not as good as a real computer/linux install, of course, but it has eliminated most of the daily annoyances of being dependent on crappy “apps”.
Yes! I loved my original Acer Aspire 1. I put Linux on it and used it forever (figuratively speaking). It stopped booting, and now won’t do anything. I’d love something modern in exactly the same form factor. It was perfect!
I had a couple of these. I used them with Lotus Approach and created a full fledged database. (parts, work orders, payments, etc) that I still use to this day. Back then I could type faster on a netbook than I could on a full 104 key keyboard.
Agree wholeheartedly. I used to have an Eee netbook almost identical to this one. When it finally did give up the ghost I went to go buy a new one only to find that the trend had passed and they weren’t really a thing anymore. I was very disappointed.
Now I’m running a Microsoft Surface which is about as close as I could get in terms of small form factor while still being a very usable laptop.
Assume you wiped Windows off the M$ Surface and running a proper OS like Linux now? :)
Have an HP notebook still working with Linux Lite. Might have to dig it out and see if a recent distro will work on it….
A couple of years ago I installed xcfe Linux on my wife’s HP laptop (purchased 2003?) It runs OK, but I don’t use it much.
I was thinking at the time to hook it to my car’s OBDII port and have it act as a supplemental display and maybe display info from the USB GPS antenna.
But I lost my round tuit.
Yeah, this is great. i still have a ASUS eee 1001PXD with an Atom N455. Currently running Ubuntu 12.04.5 – distro was LXLE I believe. it’s been so long…
For the longest time, this was my TV room surfing machine, but the browsers are too long in the tooth now. I also used this machine as a serial terminal, Arduino dev, travel laptop. Batteries now dead and gone. But I’m inspired to try this new MX distro on it.
I hear you re having a small, easy to carry computer for travel, commuting etc. Last fall, I wanted something small to bring on a trip, and I settled on a cheap 8″ Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy 7 lite) and i put a rugged case on it. It’s not a phone, not a Linux laptop, but for everyday non-tech stuff… it really did the job- browsing, Googling, app for rail pass, email, maps… decent battery life. So I guess that’s one answer.
I also have a couple of little ASUS eee 701s. Has anyone breathed new life into those?
I would honestly recommend picking up something like an 11″ Chromebook with an AMD processor. I’ve got one that’s now liberated and running Arch and with 4GB RAM, it’s surprisingly nippy and can play modern video codecs too.
I went through same process. Looked at new el-cheapo chromebooks with small form factors and such and eventually just bought a refurb Thinkpad straight from Best Buy online for like $400- and with warranty and everything. it will last forever running the version of Linux on it currently and do what I need it to do indefinitely. And I’m pretty sure battery is replaceable too.
the browser kills these old laptops. that’s why i run the browser remote (over vnc). a bonus is i get real world battery life about twice the vendor-advertised claims (they are assuming windows with a local browser).
OS updates are getting a little harder to deal with on a 10 year kind of timespan. a 10 year old kernel isn’t really compatible with modern glibc anymore. there are fallback hacks in glibc but they don’t work! otoh, i don’t know if there’s any real reason you couldn’t build a new kernel for most of these older laptops… i know my 2010 laptop is stuck with a 32-bit kernel but even that processor supports the 64-bit ISA. atom n450 supposedly does as well. my 2015 ARM laptop is a little bit more of a challenge, but even if i limit myself to the chromium kernel that google maintained for a while, i can step forward at least a few years newer then 2015!
the thing i struggle with is ‘why?’ i have a pile of old laptops in the basement with different failures, including an acer netbook very similar to the one in the article. the fact of the matter is, any one of them could stand in for my daily driver in a pinch (except the one that has suffered a spicy pillow amputation while in storage), but why would i suffer any frustrations when a brand new laptop is well under $200? why would i maintain the 4 year old laptop i’m using right now?
it’s a real question. now that everything is so cheap, thrift doesn’t provide a compass for my journey anymore. i simply don’t know how to make these decisions that used to be easier for me. the disposability also makes it hard to justify the effort to ‘get to the bottom of’ a hardware or driver or configuration problem. it’s not even that the pace of tech has really changed, just ‘5 years’ means something different to me at age 44 than it did at 14.
I have similar feelings, similar age ;-)
That is why I use a current MacBook. I do not want to fiddle around for days, just for the machine to be replaced next year.. Time has become too precious for many things.
When I was 20, I thought that I would build/configure/fix stuff to last for ever. Later I realized that requirements/habits/software/life changes so many things so fast, that I do not even plan to adjust stuff like I used to. Like adding better 12V power ports (I use SpeakOn) to my car. As I buy used, the car is probably going to be replaced before I find time for such an insignificant project.
Or my 3D printer. A few years ago, the electronics had to be replaced, as the mainboard got fried and the original was not available anymore. Not wanting to throw away an almost perfectly working device, I spend a looooot of time researching a fitting replacement (found BigTreeTech), had to replace all connectors, hone in the software… Today I would just get a new printer.
But this still goes against my grain, but realizing that if everything goes well, I have 40 years left, this just gives a different perspective on spending time in a way that feels good. Sometimes this can be with finding a new replacement, but the longer, the less.
I’m a similar age and feel a similar way. A couple of notes though.
1. Stuff that you lusted after in your youth is either really cheap or really expensive. If you can find the cheap stuff and fix it up right before it becomes expensive, you have a nice side-hustle and it’s probably something that you would have done for free (or out of economic necessity) when you were young.
2. If you decide you don’t want to spend the time fixing something, make sure to dispose of it in a way that the next generation of hackers can have a go. This might be craigslist, kerbside recycling, a local school, thrift stores… of course, any of these might also have TOO MUCH defunct hardware! Spend an afternoon with a niece/nephew pulling it to bits to “see how it works.” The kid probably won’t grow up to be an engineer, but even if they learn how to use a screwdriver, they’ll still be ahead of most of their peers.
Your cheap isn’t someone else’s cheap though.
If these laptops are donated and make their way to less well off people, getting something that works on them but is vaguely up to date is very useful.
However I wonder how a 14 year old single-core Atom compares to even a quad-core 2GHz A55 as often seen in the lowest-end smartphones.
Rather poorly, I suspect. I just got an old NUC to play with, with a 6th gen i3 dual core, and I’m pretty sure my Pixel 6a can beat it. The real killer is efficiency, though. That i3 gets toasty.
The problem with donating stuff is
A) securely removing all your data
B) if you do securely remove the data, you’ve probably wiped the drive, and they’ll need to reinstall the OS. And tracking down a distro that’ll run on it is hard.
C) if they do manage to get it going, it’s probably got a well known issue with a score of at least 9, with the fix not available for this device.
Pre-internet it was fine, but these days the risks of old devices is high.
“[..] it’s not even that the pace of tech has really changed, just ‘5 years’ means something different to me at age 44 than it did at 14.”
That’s funny, because I’ve felt different when I was a pre-teen.
2, 5 or 10 years felt like a small time frame to me, despite my young age at the time.
Nowadays it’s rather the opposite, despite time flying so fast.
I know that 2 to 5 years aren’t much per se, but they feel like it.
And they pass so quickly, despite feeling like they’re a long time. It’s..paradox. Not sure how to explain.
That’s a thing- for sure. Time goes by super fast and super slow at the same time. High school still feels like it was “a few years ago” and it definitely was waaaay longer ago than that. I had a “moment” when I realized I started grad school before any of my current students were born. But it still feels so far off and also like it was yesterday. We should come up with a catchy name- Time Length Paradox or something.
Same here. I feel like I started my current job last year but I’ve been here almost 7 years. A week lasts about 5 minutes. I’m almost 40 but I still don’t feel like I am, although I notice getting older, I still feel like I’m 25, juts with worse health. It’s really weird. High school was like, 10 years, but I was only there for 4. Time keeps going faster and faster and faster. Even days feel like hours. It’s really weird. And I’m almost ready to grow up, just not yet.
My current daily driver is an x131e Chromebook from 2013. I have Debian on it. Works fine.
I don’t know MX Linux, but in machines with same (or less) specs I use Slackware 15, with no compromise. Only I must use XFCE instead KDE, but is equally good and standard!
For a slower machine I use Pi Deaktop. Recently I put Slackware and it was at least equally responsive.
Agree with the Slackware recommendation.
I have played with MX on an old acer dual-core and and old thinkbook, both had problems with the (evil) auto updates. And the updates, of course, created other problems.
And if you are running Ubuntu, you might as well be running windoze, they are both bloated and convoluted messes. I am testing mint on this new asus machine, its ok of course its ok, this little computer is insanely powerful (ryzen 9).
Makes me want to dust off my old EEEPC and give it a go. I did love that thing.
“It’s often said these days that computers don’t become outdated nearly as quickly as they did in the past,
with even a decade-old computer still more than capable of handling daily tasks for the average person. ”
Yeah, if there wasn’t the “modern” internet with forced SSL2 encryption and websites that are ridiculously bloated. 😮💨
I do have vintage PCs that can smoothly emulate an N64 or a Power PC Macintosh,
but struggle when it comes to visit the web-based e-mail login.
The site is somewhat bloated that I have to power up my modern Mac with Apple Silicon.
A few years ago, a thin client running Windows 98SE was still powerful enough for same site of that e-mail provider.
Things like this make me miss Flash and Shockwave.
They were demanding, but way less of a bloatware than what modern websites are.
And, they were pretty and interactive, at least.
Modern web is such a step backwards.. 😮💨
Modern websites can still be lightweight and fast, but that requires the developers to put a lot more work into it instead of just importing a thousand libraries to do everything. The SSL does add some overhead though, I wish it wasn’t forced on sites where there is no private information being transferred.
Flash was a security nightmare, I’m very glad it’s dead.
The SSL protects you against MITM attacks. Remember when you could sit in a coffee shop and drop MITM on everyone using the WiFi, and replace the images with pron and stuff…? Or malware? That’s why we have SSL everywhere.
My ThinkPad R400 has a rubber stamp date inside that says 2009-09-09.
I run an outdated version of Linux Mint on it. I did upgrade the RAM and HDD (1Tb) and dual boot it (sometimes) to Win7.
TLS1.3 works fine on older hardware, I can browse the internet with a 336MHz P2 Thinkpad 600E with 128Mb of PC-133 SDRAM, the biggest issue is screen real estate and battery power, also given that even current generations of computers struggle to simulate the N64 with any level of accuracy. I’m skeptical about “smoothly”, perhaps you mean you can play a selection of libultra games that were released on the N64 during it’s commercial run, but that’s not simulating the N64, it’s executing an approximation of libultra and RSP microcode, good luck running any of the recent releases built using the libdragon.
https://exegnulinux.net/ also runs smoothly, with video plays smoothly with GTK+ Pipe Viewer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMUeePXx8Ek
(firefox youtube is too slow, so the desktop based streamer is faster)
NM10 chipset, has the 3150, only integrated. MPEG-2 hardware based decoding only.
https://github.com/hatonthecat/linux_distro_tests#exegnulinux-devuan-gnulinux-with-trinity-desktop
To squeeze out the most from very old hardware, you may want to consider Alpine Linux, which employs musl libc instead of glibc, and that translates in a huge save of resources. Musl isn’t compatible with glibc, so packages have to be ported, but as of today most common packages already have been. Network stuff is already ported as Alpine is one of the choices for use in VM and containers, then also desktop stuff like Firefox, LibreOffice etc. are in their repositories. Give it a try and you won’t be disappointed.
Also, it directly supports the raspberry Pi (unfortunately images for other ARM boards aren’t available), and it is a lot thinner and leaner than Raspberry Pi OS / Raspbian.
https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/
Puppy Linux anyone?
I used to daily drive it for some years! (Slacko 5.6) It was awesome, learnt a lot about Linux while there.
Games like Terraria and Minecraft ran smoother than any other distro did on my laptop at the time (as a good puppyist running as root ofc ;) )
My daily driver is a laptop only 2 or 3 years newer than this. But with an i3, not the very weak atom processor line. Runs Linux Mint 21 perfectly. Did swap the HDD to a 1TB SSD recently, boot times are very quick. As far as websites with excessive bytes of content on pages go, well an ad blocker and NoScript in firefox makes modern pages load just as well as older simpler pages did in the era when this laptop was manufactured.
Max RAM on 99% of netbooks from that period is <=2GB. Some expandable but not past 4. Sure you could find one that does more, but, regardless..
(1) find a mrchromebox compatible chromebook (most are, I say ‘find’ to get specs that match your needs.. ie ARM / x64)
(2) buy the chromebook on sale (bestbuy in the states has amazing BF sales coming up)
(3) profit
getting a m3 chromebook with 8gb ram (plus USB A, 2 USB-c (not thunderbolt), micro sd reader) costs ~$100 on BF. Screen resolution 1080p+ at 14inch with touchscreen. Backlit keyboard/ Battery life is 14 hours.
If you’re in the states and dont care about refurbs – https://www.ebay.com/itm/276553848429
Acer CB514-4HT – Comes with IPS display 14″ Touchscreen Chromebook Intel i3-N305 3.80GHz 8GB 512GB ChromeOS
~$183 with discount code
Immediately follow this guide – https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/firmware/wp/disabling.html
Takes 10 minutes tops, flash open source bootloader and run your favorite flavor. Ubuntu has had most functional keys (keyboard brightness, etc) for a few years but now most flavors have it on the latest kernel. MX included.
Highly recommend x64s obviously since not as many arm variants to choose from.
I should do a write-up of getting my Toshiba 1805 running Debian 11 off live usb and see if I can get a feature too. There is something serreal about getting a modern (still supported) copy of Linux running on an ancient device, connecting to the network, downloading updates and packages with no issues.
The only rough part was getting it booting.
TubeTime ftw!
Antix (MX’s cousin for older systems) is a better fit for this system
Big feat… The machine I’m typing this in is an ever older vintage 2006 Dell Vostro with the T5670 Core Duo at 1.8 Ghz and 4 gigs of RAM (maxed out)… the second HD is showing its age even when I pulled it from a Mac so an SSD is in order. Runs linux Zorin 16 with the 5.15 kernel and in general is a good machine (even runs 1080 video) and in general just is to acknowledge is behind the times though I’m loath to dispose of it.
Served me well as a connection to my work network to do offsite fixes and checking my email when at home so perhaps my loyalty is justified. Only problems are the HD which will soon turn into an archive and the Linux’ unexplainable refusal to use a CSR 4.0 BT USB dongle I bought for peanuts. Otherwise it’s still solid as a rock.
HPs otoh… they’re as trusty as a last night’s fling.
“HPs otoh… they’re as trusty as a last night’s fling.”
I bought an HP tower(looking) a few months ago at Bworst Buy ~$600‐700.
I returned it a few days later, after opening the case, I found very little expansion, a tiny power supply, and even tinier wires running from the power supply. It was built to a price point much lower than HPs of yore. I’m still using a Dell >10 years old for a desk machine.
I wanted a cheap and simple netbook and found the StarLite Mkiii. But it was already end-of-line so I bought the MkIV. To this day I hate that choice:
– It’s a tablet, but too big and heavy to really hold in your hand like a tablet
– As it is top-heavy you meed a lot of desk real-estate to put down, about double from a laptop
– I didn’t realize 10.5″ or 12″ makes such a difference. I find it too bulky
– You can’t carry it around easily between desks (my usecase being a woodworking shop, so I need to move between workstations about 10 times a day).
Until I started using mine I never realized the differences between a laptop and a tablet with keybord+stand.
Other than that, I really don’t like how it works. I have NO love for the thing, which doens’t make me want to invest in it.
Reading this article I realize I might want to try for a proper netbook and maybe sell this thing.
For users of Firefox on small displays: the compact UI density is still available but hidden from the GUI and “unmaintained”
At about:config set browser.uidensity to 1
Working fine here at FF 115 ESR
“This raised the question of whether modern Linux would even run on this ancient Atom CPU, the answer of which turned out to be a resounding ‘yes’, as MX Linux still offers 32-bit builds of its most recent releases.”
The N450 is 64 bit. I still use a similar netbook (HP Mini 210 with 2 GB and an SSD), and it doesn’t need an exotic lightweight distro. Debian 12.7 with XFCE runs fine.
It is, but it’s locked out in BIOS in Eee PC. However, I have successfully installed 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04 (terminal only) without much hassle, after flashing unofficial BIOS.
So nice!! Did the same to a dell inspiron 1145 using debian 12 headless, for terminal use and small server it does the job. The UI loads fine if one needs it although very slows, struggle to do small tasks but to browse the internet it is a no go.
I don’t think this should be very surprising. Having lived through the 90s I remember a time where a couple years change was a big thing. It’s been a while since I felt that way.
8088 – DOS
286 – never had one
386 – You can run Windows (if you want to)
486 – You can play an MP3 if you have something top-of-the-line but you cannot do anything else at the same time OR you can run a web browser, Instant Messenger and write a paper at the same time but no music.
Pentium – Do all those things above including the MP3 at the same time. Listen to streaming audio via RealAudio.
Pentium w/ MMX – Suddenly new software started requiring this. Video games are starting to look better. And hey.. now there is RealVideo. At a similar level of quality to bad rabbit ears (but a much more digital looking interference pattern) I can actually watch TV stations from around the world via the internet!
AMD K6I/II/III/Thunderbird – Progressively less wait time to start basically the same tasks as above. Somewhere in here CAD loses it’s built in rendering coffee breaks. Why is it so hot in this room?
Pentium IV – A bit faster yet. Still eats a lot of power but can’t quite fry an egg on the CPU anymore.
Somewhere along the way – Hey, it isn’t expensive to leave a PC running as a server anymore.
Also somewhere along the way – When did everyone get so obsessed with high resolution video. Do you really need to see the actor’s skin pores to enjoy the story plot?
Everything after that – Well.. OpenSCAD renders are still getting faster. I wouldn’t even know how to test the limits of these machines beyond that. Maybe upgrades still mean something to gamers? I could probably watch a wall full of YouTube videos all at once like Marty McFly’s kid in BTTF2 without stressing the CPU but I don’t find that to be very pleasant.
Nice timeline!
Ugh one of my parental units refuses to let the eeepc go. The atom was a shit proc and the actual bottleneck of the whole thing. A couple of years ago it got updated with an SSD and a tamed version of win10. It is still used daily for basic browsing and such. The ssd helped a lot along with forced chipset drivers that unclogged the buss by about a third. Did a little overclocking too which seemed to help with video streaming but I cannot get them to upgrade to a modern machine until this one and the backup unit die lol. Anyway it actually has dual boot win10 and puppy linux which runs pretty well. People likes what they likes I tells ya…
I am Windows user. The biggest problem of using Windows with older PC is Windows Update and modern webpages. The latter applies to Linux PCs too. Windows is constantly doing its insanely time consuming computation of figuring out if it needs Update. While the modern webpages seem to assume my PC has unlimited storage and serving me endless pages and fetching complex ajax libraries.
The problem with Linux PC is that there is always this 1 killer app that is not available on Linux. And running Windows emulator is just too much trouble to worthwhile. I have not seen anyone who has no engineering degree using a Linux distro as their daily driver. The amount of work involved in installing something that doesn’t come with the distro is insane.
If all you need is browse some webpages, a chromebook will do. Even a good quality one can be found for less than $200 and most comes standard with 1080p display.