I used to play around with an original Eee PC 700 quite a bit.
The most interesting experiment was installing Debian without X and using that as a desktop OS.
I used links2 in framebuffer mode to browse the internet, alpine for mail, cmus for music, fbi to view images, mplayer to watch movies, mc for file management and tmux for multi-tasking. It worked surprisingly well and solved the issue of the tiny storage, anemic processor, low RAM and small screen, but only after you’ve memorized all the keyboard commands.I’ve still got mine. I ran Debian with Xfce if I remember correctly.
I still have my HP Mini311, it has a 11.6" screen, 1366x768, discrete GPU, can decode 1080p in hardware and output on tv via HDMI. In 2009 it was a beast!
I changed the 2.4bg with a 2.4/5n wifi, upgraded to 3GB of ddr3 ram, SSD, overclocked to 2GHz, and installed MX Linux on it, works perfect.
makes me want to restore my sibling’s eee pc now.
it is not fair to write this kind of history and not to mention one laptop per child.
LXQt time
I remember running lxde and xfce on my eee at various points. If lxqt still supports 32 bit machines, I bet it would still work okay.
The EEE PC
I wish I could give you more upvotes because you deserve all the upvotes
Yeah, I have 701 (?) 2g surf somewhere. It was kinda fun to do programming in vim in tty, and waaay less fun to compile stuff…
I still have my white 701 that I put a black keyboard on and soldered in a Bluetooth module. Some of the most fun I’ve had using a computer and I wish the form factor was still a thing.
Had a 100X, back then with 2GB RAM. Worked OOTB with Linux w/o trouble, all hardware supported. Good times. Later, starting your browser maxed out the RAM so not a viable option anymore.
Nowadays I can happily recommend a HP Stream 11". Works perfectly with Fedora 39, good battery life. (Obviously you don’t want to use such a machine for more than casual work/internet surfing. But as a cheap/solid travel netbook, it is perfect. Typing this message on it.)
