Anyone know of anything fitting an Eeepc?
@ everyone recommending debian: it no longer supports 32 bit machines: https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#reduced-support-for-i386
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Puppy, Porteus, antiX, Q4OS, Slax run on 32-bit x86 and are supposed to be under the 256 MiB RAM mark.
Zorin Lite and Xubuntu ~512MiB.
Mint, LXDE and Bunsenlabs ~1GiB.YMMV
One of the OG eeepc is what got me into Linux. The distro it shipped with was ass (it was a Linux variant) so I went hopping and discovered Puppy Linux and a bunch of others. Ended up sticking with !# (crunchbang) which later renamed to BunsenLabs and I still run it on most of my devices to this day.
Lots of good recommendations here. I use antiX on an ASUS EeePC X101CH and it works pretty well. I think the last release is a year old, though.
Something with LXDE or XFCE Desktop Environment, that is usually the DE for low-spec distros.
FreeBSD offers a 32 bit variant still via their i386 image.
Expect a small learning curve if you’ve never used UNIX, but most things are similar enough that you’ll be fine. If you’re ok picking up the FreeBSD handbook.
Debian. Just Debian. No drama.
Not Debian 13. https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#reduced-support-for-i386
Also note that the Debian team uses i386 to mean what we think of by 32 bit x86, not just CPUs from the very old i386 generation. https://wiki.debian.org/i386
This thread is making me nostalgic for Ubuntu Netbook Remix
Bunsenlab Linux…
Though don’t expect miracles, that cpu is too slow for the modern internet. It’s not usable for web browsing on any OS.
I think it should be okay. I have a pentium M machine that did alright with web browsing on Bunsenlabs. Had 2 gb of ram. I used an original eeepc and an MSI u230 wind with the same cpu. The atom and pentium M are about the same
slow internet could make for a fun opportunity to play around with a text-based browser from the terminal like Lynx, w3m, and browsh.
Antix,Debian ,arch i386 project
i wouldn’t recommend debian since they’ve dropped 32 bit support in trixie, their latest release. the previous release, bookworm, still supports 32 bits archs, but it eol’s less than a year from now
This is not true.
They’re dropping support for i586 and below. 32-bit systems with i686+ processors will still run fine.
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#reduced-support-for-i386
From trixie, i386 is no longer supported as a regular architecture: there is no official kernel and no Debian installer for i386 systems
[…]
Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to trixie. Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as amd64, where possible, or retiring the hardware.
Not all 32-bit systems are i386. For example, my 32-bit Debian thinkpad runs Trixie just fine. Because it’s i686 which is still supported.
So again, Debian 13 isn’t dropping 32-bit support. Just i586 support and below.
Not all 32-bit systems are i386
but the debian i386 architecture means all 32 bit x86 processors. there’s no “i686” build of debian
there are no i586 or i686 kernel or iso available, you can look for them. i386 packages only exist for compatibility reasons, so you can run 32 bit applications on amd64 machines. please read the release notes
I was wrong. Thank you. And I don’t have Trixie on the 32-bit Thinkpad, it was my other laptop.
+1 for Gentoo
Gentoo will work if you have the time to work through the install, and stick with provided binaries for large packages (or have a lot of patience with updates).
Hey Droechai
How about trying Sparklinux
They have stable, oldstable and oldoldstable images.
based on debian.
I use sparky on both my raspberry pi 3B’s.
Sparky 7 still supports i686 architecture (32 bit).
ISO MinimalGUI i686 (32 bit)
slackware, netbsd, openbsd
edit: i forgot tinycore, you gotta try that too
+1 for NetBSD it’s such a great OS for ressource limited platforms. Rough edges by today standards but it worth a try on OP’s PC.
Edit : would you please post something like neofetch screenshot when your eeepc is up and running ? :)
Since I doubt the latest and greatest drivers interest you, I suggest debian. Might as well profit from extreme stability and reliability
OpenSUSE has a 32-bit build.
Running modern web browsers is no fun.
I assume there will be a not too distant date in the future when Firefox ESR drops 32bit altogether…
