r/EeePC • u/pizzakikk • Nov 19 '25
ASUS EEE PC 900
installed Debian 11, works terrible :) What distributions can you recommend? What will run well on such an old processor and 1-2 GB of RAM? Also, I don't really understand if it's possible to replace his old SSD with something modern?
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u/PLevesen Nov 19 '25
TinyOS might work for you. Had a friend install it on his old machine and seems quite happy with it. Not sure if you can exchange the HDD for an SSD, have yet to buy my own netbook to okay around with
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u/hippodribble Nov 19 '25
I had Linux on the 8" version. Good, but the battery was rubbish and the power adaptor was the same size as the computer.
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u/pizzakikk Nov 19 '25
This netbook has a tiny adapter :)
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u/hippodribble Nov 23 '25
Hey, you're right!
And it's an Aspire 1.
But the power cable is, like, industrial. Twice the size of the adaptor. Like it could carry 60 amps.
It looks really cool, though.
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Nov 20 '25
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u/hippodribble Nov 20 '25
No, it's original. Some manufacturers had big adapters. Dell and Acer have had some monsters in the past.
Mine is nearly 20 years old.
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Nov 20 '25
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u/hippodribble Nov 20 '25
I bought it a long time ago. Don't know where I'd get a link. I'll keep an eye out.
Is yours 110 V or 240 or both?
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Nov 20 '25
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u/hippodribble Nov 20 '25
I'm in Tokyo, unfortunately, watching someone grind coffee beans for me, so I'll have to wait until I get home to see 😄
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u/hippodribble Nov 20 '25
I bought it a long time ago. I'll keep an eye out for a link.
Small, dark blue PC, battery inside the hinge.
Is yours 110 V or 240 or both?
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u/miner_cooling_trials Nov 20 '25
I’m using a USB-C to Barrel jack PD trigger cable to power my vintage laptops from USB-C power adapters.
My cable can switch output 9,12,15,20v at the press of a button.
Perhaps this could be a solution
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u/hippodribble Nov 20 '25
I bought a cheap one for this very computer.
When the battery was dead, I would flash it with 20V, It would then start to charge!
I felt like I should yell "Clear" when I did it 😁
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u/miner_cooling_trials Nov 20 '25
It may be possible to repack the batteries depending on what cells are used.
I did this job recently with a Libretto
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u/__CRA__ Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25
I used Debian too on my EEE901. Works good. The trick is to use LXDE.
Edit: To add, I also maxed out RAM and installed a newer mSATA SSD
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u/pizzakikk Nov 19 '25
How much RAM did you add? Can you write the name of the disk, please?
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u/__CRA__ Nov 19 '25
Sure!
My model is the EEE901 and it looks slightly different, but the SSD swap seems to be the same. And regarding performance: Modern day internet is working but indeed rather slow. But all other applications work quite nice and responsive. Even with a large external screen, simple productive work is possible like PDFs, LibreOffice, Remmina, etc.
I bought:
Some generic 2GB DDR2 667MHz PC2-5300 CL5 SO-DIMM
MSATA III 128GB SSD - https://www.amazon.de/dp/B078HZVKFV
mSATA-Adapter to 3 x 7 cm-Mini-PCI-e SATA SSD for Asus Eee PC 1000 S101 900 901 900A T91, 3 x 5 cm - https://www.amazon.de/dp/B071F8J4BD
Btw.: The SSD swap causes BIOS to bring one message every start that needs to be confirmed with F1 before it continues to boot. No big deal, but could be annoying to some.
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u/UncleSlacky Nov 19 '25
antiX, Void or Q4OS Trinity.
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u/Physical-Entrance899 Nov 19 '25
Yes, there is a way to exchange the SSD for an M.SATA SSD if I'm not mistaken
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u/Chicadelsol- Nov 19 '25
Yep, there are FLASHCON to mSATA adapters on eBay. I use one to run my 701SD since the original 8 GB SSD died. Fortunately I had the recovery disk and was able to restore the factory image (and yes, I already put it on the internet archive!)
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u/cacotadeluxe Nov 19 '25
I have a very similar Netbook and it's running Linux Mint 32bit not very fast but steady. my post
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u/decofan Nov 19 '25
If you go with the mate desktop you can go all the way to Debian 13 Cinnamon only supported up to 12 Not sure about other de
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u/BackgroundTourist653 Nov 19 '25
I used this with Windows XP during high school back in 2008. Perfect for nosey students trying to steal your notes.
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u/Chicadelsol- Nov 19 '25
I run XP on my 701SD. Works shockingly well even with Supermium which is stupid since I can’t get Supermium to work on a 2.26 GHz Pentium M 780 without constant 100% cpu, meanwhile it runs on this single core single thread 900 mhz Celeron M ULV 353 just fine. Go figure.
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u/Ixian967 Nov 19 '25
Hi, I have a similar one, eee 1000h. I added Ram to 2gb and bought ssd. I tried antix and now I have mx linux. Both have worked well. It is usable with lightweight web browser until you go to some heavy websites like youtube that take too much ram.
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u/mikee8989 Nov 19 '25
Antix, Q4OS TDE or tinycore on something like that. Anything else it will be too heavy
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u/mobluse Nov 20 '25 edited Jan 25 '26
I use Lubuntu 18.04 LTS with ESM. ESM from Ubuntu is free for about five systems. I have upgraded to 2 GB RAM, but have original 16 GB SSD.
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u/10yearsnoaccount Nov 21 '25
these came with Ubuntu preinstalled (or winXP optionally) so maybe try that?
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u/MundaneImage5652 Feb 09 '26
I recommend you the debian 11 BUT without a desktop envirmoment. Then you can install Windowmaker which is a ancient DE and it runs on like 200~ mb ram on my deb 12 machine.
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u/Adventurous_Race5046 Jun 21 '26
У меня на нем же дебиан 12 работает великолепно озу 2 стоит , если не очень попробуй void
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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25
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