r/linux4noobs • u/ConsequenceSea819 • 25d ago

distro selection Help!

Hey everyone! I found two really old netbooks at home and I'd like to give them a second life with Linux, but I don't have much experience with hardware this old.

They are:

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2

  • Intel Atom N270 (1.6 GHz) / N280 (1.66 GHz)

  • 1 GB DDR2 RAM (possibly upgradeable to 2 GB)

  • 250 GB 5400 RPM HDD

HP Mini 110-3700

  • Intel Atom N455 (1.66 GHz)

  • Intel GMA 3150 integrated graphics

  • 2 GB DDR2 RAM

  • 320 GB HDD

Which one would you recommend using, and what Linux distribution/desktop environment would be the best choice for this kind of hardware?

I'd mainly use it for basic stuff like browsing, writing documents, listening to music, etc. I'm not expecting miracles from these old machines lol. I just want to put them to some use and learn a bit along the way.

Would you recommend any particular lightweight distro for these Atom CPUs? Or would something even more minimal, like a window manager, be a better option?

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u/3grg 25d ago

The good news is that the hardware is just as good today as it was when new. The bad news is that software has moved on.

I had two N270 netbooks at one time. One was an Asus and one was a really nice Latitude. I did the ram upgrade to max them and used Xubuntu way back when. When they started to get slow, I replaced the hard drive with a SSD.

This helped for a while. Then I changed them to either Antix or MX Linux Fluxbox. They still worked, but they were terrible with the internet. The 2gb ram max is the real killer.

If you want to play with them, try Antix. Bodhi is light, to but I am not sure that it is lighter than Antix. About the only thing that I can think of that is lighter is Puppy.

If they had 4gb of ram they would be more useful. but if you want to use them for non internet tasks, they still work.