Hello
I bought a used ASUS EEE PC 1101HA netbook, equipped with Intel Atom Z520 processor, Intel GMA 500 graphics card,
2 GB memory, 250 GB HDD, with Windows 7 Home Premium.
It is very slow, I would only use it to surf the internet while traveling and on vacation; it's already a problem to browse: with Firefox (1 open tab) it takes up 100% of the CPU (no memory problem); with light browsers (Qtweb) I don't read mail ...
Now I was thinking of putting Linux in DUAL-BOOT, but I'm confused.
Years ago on my old notebook I had tried Mint (good graphics, stable), Zorin (which they say is the most similar to Windows, but blurry graphics, I didn't like it) and Puppy (lightning turning on RAM, but minimal).
Now reading around, I see that Mint has problems on Youtube videos, Puppy has hardware configuration problems, Lubuntu that many advise does not include dual-booting ...
I would like a light distro with firefox, desktop similar to windows, and some accessory functions, with dual-boot.
I await advice.
Thanks for the answers.

I used Mint for almost the exact same machine for years. Didn't dual boot. It wasn't slow at all. There are also more distributions which are far lighter weight than Mint.

Your Asus EEE 1101HA netbook is not a good candidate for Linux, sorry. The GMA 500 chipset is known to have bad Linux compatibility and poor multimedia performance for videos and games.

I recommend to continue using Windows 7. EEE 1101HA is old and slow hardware, so surfing the web will be a frustrating experience, I'm afraid.

Here is a list of hardware with good Ubuntu Linux compatibility. (Mint is based on Ubuntu, so these laptops should also run Mint very well.) I recommend to save up for something on this list: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/

1 members found this post helpful.

Possible distros worth trying :-

AntiX (base version)
Tiny Core
SliTaz

Sadly, I tend to agree with snowpine's conclusion. I ran Linux on an older EE machine a few years ago and the web and YouTube were starting to get difficult. I have what is basically a Chromebook with a Celeron and a few gigs of RAM and Intel graphics and it's definately struggling with YouTube and more modern websites.

I think these old atom machines are only useful with work in terminal and maybe running some lightweight daemons.

Well mine was an Azus and I think it was a Z530. Fact was that the hard drive died, so I booted it using Mint Live from a thumbstick the whole time. I forget if it was Debian Edition, and I also forget if I used MATE. I had no problems with it. I used it for web surfing, but not sure if I viewed much Youtube. I take that back, I didn't use it much for Youtube mainly because I never really viewed much streaming video at all, then or now. But it worked, WiFi and all, nothing slow about it. I used the DE all the time, not command line.

Sounds as if hector56 has already tried this though.

All I would suggest is to make sure they have a 32-bit distribution as well as see if they can upgrade the RAM by finding some spare RAM somewhere else. I may have upgraded mine to 4G.

Generally speaking, I enjoy the hobby of running Linux on old hardware. So long as our expectations are realistic, it can be fun to use open-source software to resurrect old dinosaur computers.

However, the GMA 500 had specific issues with Linux. While it was an "Intel" chipset in name, in actual practice, this chipset was never supported by the open-source Intel drivers. Usually, Intel graphics are very well-supported in Linux, but GMA 500 "Poulsbo" was a rare exception.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupp...eoCardsPoulsbo
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...tem&px=MTMyODA

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the answers, in particular Snowpine. Patience, I will have to keep win and the slowness. In fact I had read in another forum to look for a distro compatible with the emgd drivers for the GMA 500 video card. I could not install them even in windows ... All too complicated.

Yes, so called.

Yes, installing any Linux distro is not going to speed it up. Certain apps will make it faster, e.g. using a dedicated Youtube client instead of a browser. I have a netbook which runs 32bit Slackware but I'm phasing it out. It's OK for emails and listening to music but I probably wouldn't do serious work on it anymore. Even Quake struggles to run on it.

The poulsbo reference makes me take back my comment about Mint Debian Edition. What I used was definitely Ubuntu derived because they did at one point get the poulsbo driver working. Looks like it was Ubuntu 12.04. Not saying that you absolutely should continue to try, just noting that I did an ATOM SBC device and we had the exact problem that the Intel bridge chip with the custom graphics component was a moderate to major problem until we got a distro to work for it. Our problem was that we didn't wish to use Ubuntu and chose a purchased embedded Linux. As part of that purchase, they provided professional services to get the graphics driver working with their distro. They obviously started with the one from Ubuntu. They actually got the graphics working pretty fast, but we required a screen rotation which gave them far more grief. You may wish to try 12.04 or similar, and check if 14, 16, or 18 have carried forward that driver, probably not. Either case, if you find that it doesn't perform, then that's the issue plain and simple. Update RAM and stick with Win7.

I hope you noticed that there was a link in my question, clicked on it and read it.
It's old, but the situation has not improved in any way (read: nobody's been working on it for a decade).

The gist is this:
Don't wake the dead.
If you live in a so-called western country you can probably afford to get something similarly specced, but with MUCH better Linux support for very, very little (or no) money.

If you are ready to run a really outdated Ubuntu version that should never, ever connect to the internet, it seems that "Ubuntu Netbook Remix" is your keyword.

Maybe Dedoimedo can inspire you? https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/eeepc-mx-linux.html

And a little update here https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/...rightness.html