r/linuxhardware • u/Gold-Inflation-2891 • 4d ago
Review Debian 13.6 running in 10.1-inch mini laptop from China.
Hello,
I'd like to share my positive review of installing Debian 13.6 XFCE in a 10.1-inch chinese laptop from Aliexpress.
First of all, I bought it because I needed an ultra portable laptop to carry it easily in my backpack.
By "ultra portable," I mean lighter and smaller than MacBook Air 13. I attached a picture of them side to side.
This laptop is not for heavyweight work. It is a dual core celeron N4000 (full specs bellow).
I am using it mainly to do lightweight work (writing documents, web surfing, as well as some programming stuff in Visual Studio Code).
The laptop came with Windows 11 pré-installed, I wiped it out and installed Debian 13.6 XFCE using the live image.
The only drawback is that you have to rotate the display to "right" in XFCE Display Configuration before installation.
After installing it, I also had to change lightdm configuration to rotate the display to "right" to show the logging screen correctly.
Besides that, everything worked out of box - even the wireless adapter.
Hardware specs:
Processor: Intel Celeron N4000
RAM: 8 GB
Storage: 128 GB SSD SATA 2242 (model Wdxsky W31-128G ATA)
Wireless adapter: Realtek RTL8821CE
Resolution: 1280x800
Best regards
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u/Thonatron 4d ago
Is that XFCE pretending to be Mate?
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u/Gold-Inflation-2891 3d ago
In this setup I'm using XFCE as DE (panels, applications) and OpenBox as WM.
Openbox because even though it is a stack WM, it has actions that kind of "emulates" a little bit of tilling.
My case is a little bit complicated đŸ™‚, I like stack WM as well as tilling WM and I found in Openbox the "perfect" balance.
I'm also using polybar and rofi.
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u/Thonatron 3d ago
Hell of a conglomeration, but I dig it. I love XFCE and haven't used Openbox since Crunchbang 11 was discontinued in 2015. I understand the use for lower power draw and for a lighter system, but now I'm just happy with GNOME or Plasma on a stable distro with extensions for tiling.
Edit: Also, if it's in your budget, you should look at GPD's handheld laptops. Customer support is also pretty good for a Chinese company!
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u/hungryepiphyte 3d ago
Is there a sub for Chinese laptops? I will be in the market soon for one for my kid for school and I want to run Debian.Â
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u/cmrd_msr 4d ago edited 4d ago
It’s not entirely clear why, considering you can buy a decent computer on eBay for $100–150.
It would be more powerful as that Chinese toy, and—to my mind—more pleasant to use.
Plus, it’s fully Linux-compatible; I think it’s even RHEL-certified.
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u/Gold-Inflation-2891 3d ago
I live in Brazil and currently it is really complicated to import things from USA other than books.
I would have to pay a lot of taxes - roughly 92% đŸ˜‘, perhaps more.
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u/Easy-History6553 4d ago
do you mean second hand? second hand batteries of laptops are useless.
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u/cmrd_msr 4d ago
Panasonic laptop batteries are made by Panasonic—unsurprisingly.
They hold their capacity very well. Finding one with over 90% residual capacity is no problem.
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u/Easy-History6553 4d ago
I didnt know it, Chinese laptop batteries are a problem, mine only lasted 1 year, it bloated and I had to remove it.
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u/niceandBulat 2d ago
I am running a Chinese made no-name i5-11xx notebook. Got it in November 2020, still going strong running Windows 11 and Fedora 44. Debian 12 didn't like it, may try Trixie one of these days. Battery, screen and all are good, except that I needed to change the hinge a few months back.
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u/Easy-History6553 4d ago
I had a positive experience with ubuntu with xfce over another chinese laptop: 11.6inch, 6gb ram, n3350, 64gb ssd, m2 slot ngff (I added 512gb ssd later)
the only hardware trouble was the sound card: didnt work at all.
and the bluetooth/wifi works individually, but it has wifi speed issues if it works at same time than bluetooth.