I put galliumOS on the laptop for my toddler… he likes it! But thats a specific distro for a specific netbook. Whatever you get, try GCompris, it’s a good collection of educational software
Real reason for the hate: The Linux community is overly focused on tribalism and has a console-wars mindset where what I’m using is obviously the best and everything else must be flawed and terrible. Manjaro is probably fine for most use cases.
…although I’d still suggest just using base Arch instead. :)
I have no experience for this matter, nor a lot of Linux either, but there seem to be some interesting choices here (there isn’t best and worst, it’s just a list, and the most adapted to what you need).
One distro that I’ve recently found runs pretty well on older/slower systems like this is wattOS. It’s a distro focused on power efficiency, but because of that it does well on underpowered systems.
Debian based distros can be very different from each other. Ubuntu, Mint, Pop!, etc are all based off debian. I think what the commenter you’re replying to is saying is to install the stock debian image, because that’s the lightest version of debian.
I used to like Debian based (and still do; I use it on my server with no intention of switching) but Opensuse is great on the desktop and supports 32 bit. Even tumbleweed is rock solid.
Personally I am using a netbook like this as a headless server with Ubuntu.
You can try to run Lubuntu, or even TinyCore and Puppy Linux on this for simple tasks.
Generally speaking, with 1GB of ram and Intel atom, as you stay away from video streaming platforms and use simple tools for writing text or run simple code in python, you would be fine. However with less than 100€ you can find laptops with core i5 4rd generation with 8gb ram. I am not sure if it worths it.
I had similar netbook like OP and was running Lubuntu for a very long time but afaik they dropped support for 32 bit architectures some time ago. I think 18.04 was the last 32 bit LTS? Not sure, I’d need to check it
Not sure I’d recommend getting anything resembling a computer with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage nowadays, but it’ll certainly still work.
I’d probably start with a minimal Debian installation (or Arch if you prefer being on the bleeding edge I guess) and then add GNOME desktop and whatever else I need afterwards. I don’t recommend checking the box that says “GNOME” in the Debian installer, as that installs a whole bunch of packages you’ll probably never use, and disk space is at a premium here.
Performance should be doable as long as you don’t multitask a lot, but don’t expect any wonders as 2 physical cores really isn’t a lot these days.
Been a while since I had a VM but iirc it was pretty easy to have a shared directory to the VM, which is very useful to (obviously) share files but it also means that since the files aren’t actually on the VM itself they’ll still be there even if you remove the VM since they’re not part of the image.
How I learned my lesson to have a shared directory was this: I had been having audio issues on the VM and at one point just decided to start over with a new VM, completely forgetting that the files I had been working on for a project were part of the VM and would be gone.
Not x86_64 based, but the PineTab2 and PineTab-V are 2 alternatives. The PineTab2 is aarch64 (ARM) based while the PineTab-V is, you guessed it, RISC-V based.
Both 8 GB RAM versions go for about $210 on their website.
Unfortunately, those don’t support a stylus. Although I love seeing a RISC-V tablet (although I wouldn’t be able to use it, since I’m not a kernel developer ;)
No worries. Just wanted to throw some alternatives your way, since I think €300 is a steep price for a 4 GB RAM tablet with no upgrade option. :) PS: Didn’t know stylus support was a thing. TIL about EMR.
I’m afraid this isn’t really the place to ask for such a device. If you ask for any kind of laptop, they pretty much only tell you to buy a ThinkPad X1 Carbon here. Sure, it’s probably a great laptop, but not for every usecase.
You’re probably not going to find a tablet with modular RAM, but 4GB will barely run a web browser these days. You will be using swap a lot and that will put a lot of wear on the non replacable SSD.
Oof. Didn’t even think of the SSD bit. The surface devices are generally good quality but the repairability is apparently atrocious with all these soldered Chips.
I’m using a Thinkpad X1 Yoga with touchscreen and stylus support. Works flawlessly with Fedora. Bought the 8 GB version with an 8th gen i7 from a local shop in Vienna for 200€, but there’s also a 16 GB one.
I would say that Surface is too old for proper use especially for that price. Have a look around more, and better deals just gonna fall into your lap.
I was specifically hoping for something with the 10" form factor. I already have a thinkpad as a laptop and was hoping for something with a smaller form factor.
Unlike ram, ssds die after some use. So the lifespan of this device depends on this SD card, eMMC is basically a soldered SD card, a bad quality ssd. I have 3 old tablets with dead eMMC, they are otherwise perfectly fine devices, but unusable for anything
I’m not too familiar with the surface lineup, but iirc there are higher end devices with replaceable ssds. I think soldered ram is not a big deal in this form factor if it’s enough for the expected use case, but a soldered hard drive lowers the lifespan of your device
My least favorite thing about Windows, above all things, is that it’s extremely difficult to discover what’s wrong with it. People just try random things until it works in most cases.
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