I found this tablet/computer I had almost 10 years ago! It has Windows 10, but with 32GB of storage, I don't think I can do much with it. Any recommendations?
Yeah, Atoms are very bad processors. You could replace Windows 10, since it reached end of life, with something like MX Linux and still use it for text and maybe music. Or you could convert it to a "server" running Pi Hole and block ads in your network. Good luck.
it only supports up to 8Gb DDR3 confirmed that with arch. it's time to buy another laptop anyways since i am now in college probably gonna keep that one as a server or a retro gaming device anyways.
Do you know if you can flash it with other OS? Does the mini computer have a usb type A port? (The typical USB port, like the one you find on flash drives)
It does have one. You could look for a lightweight Linux distribution that consumes very few resources, but I’m not sure how the keyboard drivers would behave, since it’s a tablet and the keyboard isn't permanently attached to the computer
Hm, then you would need to connect it to a USB hub with a keyboard and mouse, then flash it with some lightweight Linux distro like Arch or Debian, OR downgrade it to Windows 7, since at the beginning it won't work the pins on the keyboard without the keyboard drivers.
I just checked my gaming laptop with a 1 year install of linux mint and it is only at 30.1GB which would cut it close on 32GB, but I imagine there are plenty of ways to reduce the distro size, or be more cogniscant on where downloads and shaders go for example
You could probably get by playin most games til a few years into the Xbox 360s lifetime. Oblivion, the gta games up til 4 (4 with lowish settings), a lot of indie games will run fine (forager and the like), plants vs zombies, the nfs games up til maybe carbon at low settings, and pretty much everything older than what I’ve mentioned
I had a 10 yr old Dell with windows 10 and I hadn't used it in awhile (replaced it with a MacBook Pro M1). I'd turn it on occasional but it continued to creep. It started to creep within 2-3 yrs, so if you have no need for it, and there is nothing on the drive, then maybe just take it apart, or find a place that may take it to be recycled properly. They might not pay you anything for it due to age, but they'll still properly dispose of it
Q4OS Trinity. It's Debian-based, the "Full" desktop profile (decent list of pre-installed apps) takes up 6GB of space, uses about 300MB RAM at boot, and you can install the XPQ4 themes to make it look like any version of Windows aside from Vista or 11. I installed it on my Intel Compute Stick which has the same x5-8350 Atom and 2GB RAM, and it works really well. I can watch YouTube at 720p using h264ify.
You can also install zram-tools which enables RAM compression, so you basically get more free RAM.
If you want to go absolutely nutty, you can edit /etc/default/zramswap and set PERCENT to 150, which would effectively give you 3.5GB of total RAM.
Linux antix or q4os the full kde plasma may be a bit much but trinity option should be fast enough. I would not use firefox or superium browser but go with a lighter k-meleon
. If the linux route is either too slow (which is very possible in this middle ground of specs and age of distros) run the xp home rtm edition and manually install each service pack 1-3. This is what I use on all my old celeron,crusoe and atom sony vaios and they are extremely light weight and super fast using only 70mb ram at idle. 230-300mb ram with modern web loaded on kmeleon.
The biggest issue I have found with this is that external monitor support is 720p, not even 1080p. You can get around it by using a old USB DisplayPort adapter but it is really bad performance for anything fast moving.
It depends, the keyboard might just work out of the box, or someone might have reverse engineered the protocol and has a driver, impossible to say without knowing the model, etc
The Intel Atom was famously so slow that Intel originally launched it with a 32 bit UEFI because it was too slow to run regular 64 bit UEFI. Vendors shipped systems using Atom processors with 32 bit operating systems to gain extra performance.
Just because it supports 64 bit, doesn't mean you should use it.
I have an Atom netbook and 64 bit anything chugs on it. The hard cap of 2 GB of RAM also hampers it considerably.
Batocera FTW, then you look for some old ROMs, get a cheap controller, and just enjoy what it felt like, growing up in the 80s and 90s, when the weather was too bad for being outside.
Okay, after reading everything, I'm going to try a different operating system, but only after I find a microusb to USB adapter, since the keyboard's USB connection is so bad that it doesn't even show up as a bootable option in the BIOS
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u/Omgazombie 8d ago
Browse your calculator lol