Mastodawn

Nonya Bidniss Mar 5

I've been physically destroying several old hard drives and prepping a pile of old electronics for recycling. The HDD in this old acer palmtop was too hard to get out. I couldn't even figure it out. So I found this very old software to supposedly wipe it. It's fine, I only ever used this thing to tinker with Arduino anyway.

It has (had) Win XP on it 😆
Note the tiny piece of sticky note covering up the camera, yeah I do that. Too many years in the IC

Nonya Bidniss Mar 7

Follow-up: Now that I've wiped this palmtop I'm tempted to try putting #Linux on it. Anybody know what might work well on it? It's over 10 years old and by today's standards pretty limited. Acer Aspire One ZG5, specs: Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD. I would want a user friendly OS that doesn't need me to do much command line if at all.

@Nonya_Bidniss Huh. I had one of those. Akshully, I have NO IDEA what happened to it..

Anyways. I ended up putting Ubuntu, slim and trimmed, on it. Turned the thing into a internet terminal, basically.

Worked... ok. Manage your expectations.

Elementary OS, maybe?

...dare I say... BSD?

It might feel a little sluggish with just 1GB RAM, but my first instinct would probably be Ubuntu.

Nonya Bidniss Mar 7

@DaveMWilburn It looks like Ubuntu MATE might work with this hardware. The requirements for other versions are beyond this computer. Can't lose anything trying it from a USB drive at least.

If that fails, there's always Puppy Linux.

You could also probably do something with TinyCore but it would probably require a lot of fiddling to get a GUI and apps loaded.

Nonya Bidniss Mar 7

@DaveMWilburn Thank you, it looks like Puppy Linux requirements are well within what this computer has. Best one yet that I've looked at.

Nonya Bidniss Mar 7

@DaveMWilburn Well I'm seeing a lot of "do not use Puppy if you are a beginner" and I saw a Reddit comment from someone with the same hardware specs as mine who said Mint ran fine so I may try that.

A more mainstream distro like Mint would almost certainly be a better user experience if it'll run.

Corey Snipes 🌱Mar 7

@Nonya_Bidniss You have some good suggestions here already. Based on your constraints I'd probably try Linux Mint with MATE or XFCE (both combos are available as pre-packaged ISOs).

Nonya Bidniss Mar 7

@coreysnipes That failed. I didn't realize it wouldn't support 32-bit.

I'll probably try a 32-bit antiX.

Corey Snipes 🌱Mar 7

@Nonya_Bidniss Ah, too bad. I was able to install Mint on a 32-bit Thinkpad X1 but it's been a while since I tried that.

@Nonya_Bidniss Based on my own experience with limited hardware, I'd say maybe antiX, Void Linux, or Bodhi Linux.

antiX has the least RAM usage and it has its own package installer. Bodhi Linux is slightly outdated.

@Nonya_Bidniss Try #antiX linux or #Artix linux. #antiX is highly recommended.

If you can spare some cash then #Zorin OS Lite.

I would suggest #AlpineLinux.

Minimal Hardware Requirements, for a graphical desktop: 512 MB of RAM, 700 MB space on a writable storage device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux

Alpine Linux - Wikipedia