I found a tiny Dell netbook at a garage sale for $25

hurrrrrrrr

what is XFCE hurrr

SATAN WILLS IT

you could install puppy linux on it

once again the cia niggers strikes at the heart of our fearless Christian Crusader Terry the Enlightened. Do not be dismayed brethren, this ill-fated attempt at our hearts can do nothing against the Power of God

Yeah, no. 1GB is more than enough to run Gentoo on, let alone babby's-first-ricer-distro.

No amount of RAM will fix the shitty Atom CPU in that thing.

but ram will speed it up some, if i'm not mistaken

the laptop in general, i mean

Keep things minimal.
Install a small distro like Arch, Gentoo or Void. Install a window manager like i3 instead of a full desktop environment, stay away from anything with a gui, use command line applications instead like cmus for music, vim for programming, mutt for your mail and if you really want to go further with the cli use links as your web browser, but I'm warning you cli web browsers aren't exactly practical. After that you should have a nice machine for coding.

I have an old one without a hard drive and run openelec on it. it's hooked up to my backup drive and a tv. handles 720p movies fine will stutter on 1080p.

Xubuntu or Lubuntu should run decently on it.
Also, get a cheap SSD for it, and it'll fly

Reading comprehension

xfce4 is considered a gui

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Bot Pokémon Go

Buy $80 worth of HDDs and run a FTP server on it.
Congrats, you got a cloud.

Just being realistic here on this things capabilities. If I had a garage I'd hook it up to some speakers in the garage and use it as an internet jukebox.

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Throw Void Linux on it and call it a day.

yeah install gentoo and come back when emerge world finishes 5 years later

replace HDD with a SSD and upgrade ram, it will be completely useless if you won't do that

Don't be ridiculous, it only takes 12 hours.

Tiny screen will still be a pain for productive tasks

unless you want to compile on the machine or run just about any processor intensive task

Install Debian netinst, don't install any of the desktop packages, set up SSH and use it as a practice headless server

Install mpd/mopidy/runeaudio for music files for a headless music player

IIRC (I had a similar ASUS Eee PC at the time), it'll take up to 2GB, which you pretty much need to do to make it usable. Should run a minimal Linux distro pretty well still.

Don't listen to this fucktard: , an old netbook with an Atom N270 and 1 GB of RAM works just fine for web browsing if you don't run bloatware and block all unnecessary scripts (which you should be doing anyways). I have an Asus EEE with similar specs and it works just fine with Arch, Openbox, and Palemoon as the browser (can even have Tor and Thunderbird running too and not have it page).

Sell it on eBay to buy more ram for it

IMO fedora is more stale meme than arch. Fresh install breaks after you upgrade. Apper happily notifies you to install updates then it breaks and won't shutdown. GG m8.
Unless you read about their "workaround" thing which to "never use it for upgrade" and its lame af.

If its already-used install getdataback NTFS to recover any goodies deleted

its got touchscreen m8, try installing Android-x86 if you can but its not a beginner's distro.
Also the best touch friendly DE choice for that is either KDE plasma 5 or Gnome wayland but the RAM will be your problem. Light distros are recommended but you can also install haxxing distros like kali.

idk if Atom N270 has extra RAM slots although it does fine even with 1GB

Used to own a netbook of similar spec, installed Debian on the thing and would just use it for listening to music and shitposting
Also used LXDE as XFCE was a little too heavy on the poor thing.

Put KolibriOS on it:
kolibrios.org/en/
The thing'll be snappy as hell, and it'll be good for basic wired internet and Doom and Quake.

This is probably the best browser on KolibriOS:
github.com/ashmew2/nskolibrios

I've run Mathematica on a worse netbook than that.

Consider upgrading its RAM. Other than that, set up something lightweight. It doesn't have to be autistic, Lubuntu would be fine too. It's powerful enough to do useful things.

1. Install Gentoo
2. Use it as file storage/light web browsing
3. ????
4. PROFIT

I have a similar one (atom N450, 1.6 GHz, 2 GB of ram), I use it for most of my stuff. Even programming. I put puppy linux on it and web browsing works just fine (as long as you block scripts). Compiling is slowish but okay. When I had javascript enabled more than 5 tabs with 8ch on them slowed it visibly, so umatrix that shit. I use it most for studying (pdf reading, etc.)
Your computer should work perfectly for most of the stuff normies do, plus (not behemoth) programming.
The real problem for me with netbooks is screen size, but you get used to it. Sometimes mobile versions of websites are better because otherwise they don't render okay.
Another thing is that this computer is old and the battery is losing hold of charge, I need to connect it to the power every hour or so, since it gets real low real fast. But it's no big deal.
One gigahertz should be enough, really, for most stuff.
Right now I'm posting from it.

Please keep this stuff out of here

Make it a privacy PC. Inconvenient to use but as secure as possible.

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Fun is fine. That memey crap just isn't funny.

perfect for Tails

There are phones more powerful than that thing and with more ram for only 10-25 USD more than what OP paid.

That's a nice looking laptop.

As long as he doesn't sink an extra $100 into parts there is zero harm in any sort of project any of us can think of.

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Throw it in the fucking garbage and re-evaluate your life decisions.

9front, BUY WAR BONDS

SLACK!!!