I was just given an old nettop from I think around 2010 - An old Acer one nettop intel atom CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz 2GB ram, it has Windows XP on it and it seems fairly smooth/quick, but I haven’t done anything other than boot it up and check the spec. I was wondering what would be best to install on it and found that choices are very limited. Linux Lite nor Lubuntu seem to be an option anymore, and almost all of the options I tried under x86_x64 on Distrowatch no longer provide an x86 or 32 bit version. These are the main ones I have seen:
Damn Small Linux (DSL) - https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
Puppy Linux - https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
AntiX Linux - https://antixlinux.com/
CachyOS - https://cachyos.org/
Tiny Core Linux - http://www.tinycorelinux.net/
Maybe a couple of others, but could anyone recommend the best option or maybe a couple that would be best and any ideas as to what may be the best use for it? Practicing coding? Just browsing? Etc. I think it may be between DSL and Puppy, but I am hoping to hear any others and will happily try them all. Linux Mint and Debian keep coming up in searches but unless I am missing something, I don’t see anything about x86/32bit versions in the latest versions.
Thanks, I created a Ventoy stick with the distros above, and the only one that I can get to run is AntiX. Puppy (Noble _ Bookworm) get the same error as this person (ventoy: not a valid block device), so I will read through that thread. The DSL doesn’t respond and Command Line halt error. I think the others were the same. So I am on my 3rd OS creating a bootable USB from ISO, and so far no others have worked either. It may end up AntiX the only option, although I have seen others mention Gentoo - which I thought had stopped support for x86, and a couple of others to try, so I look forward to them :) MX, Q4OS, OpenBSD and Debian.
That’s a little annoying with all the others not working. Haven’t seriously tried most of them so I’m afraid I can’t really help you there - though if you ever try Q4OS that others have suggested let me know if it works well cause I may give that a whirl too on the little eee.
If you decide to stick with antix, I could maybe see if I find some of my old notes. I vaguely remember the wifi giving me some trouble and the homebrewed settings panels of the distro can be… a little funky :-)
Good luck!