i have an old netbook, 10 inch screen, single-core 32 bit atom processor, 1gb ram, you know the type... anyway it seems almost useless at this point in time, running chrome, and even disabling flash i can really only have a small group of webpages open.. tried linux mint with both cinnamon and mate and they dont feel any more responsive or faster than windows 7 starter.. i put XP on it and it feels a lot better, but id honestly like to stick with linux as my only needs are web browsing and perhaps some way of running kik messenger (wish i could get twerk/chrome to work)

so with that said, i dont know if the lowness of what ive tried before on this came from mint and all its ubuntu bloatedness or from mate/cinnamon being gnome based, would lxde be any faster than these? but im also confident i could just configure fluxbox with a desktop and taskbar to offer about the same functionality as XP and weight even less.. so i need a distro thats lightweight, no bloat, however easy enough to configure and setup, uses a package manager (would take too damn long to compile anything myself on this thing), and offers a solid, lightweight desktop environment of which im also looking for suggestions

so.. suggestions?

Hmm, ever considered Manjaro? An Arch that has features Arch misses (intuitive updates, intuitive hardware detection, better installer) and really has a small footprint
Just...ramblin'
Thor

ive used manjaro netbook edition and absolutely hated the otherwise stupidness that seems to be rampant in "netbook" desktop environments that it had.. if i compare arch to debian in that they seem to be core distros others base more user-friendly distros off of, then how does manjaro compare to say mint?.. faster? lighter? or about the same?, mint, at least with cinnamon and mate seemed to faster than windows 7 on my netbook which was BARELY useable

the installation was a hell of a lot easier than archs though, configuration as well.. the desktop environment it had was so awful it was only installed for maybe 30 minutes, id be willing to try it again if i could be sure its not going to be as bloated as mint (or perhaps it was just the cinnamon/mate environments that were bloated, i dunno)

Granted...all granted...
...if that is the out-of-the box GUI (XFCE) and its theme, then I fully agree...it is in one scream...ugly. I had to change that right away...
Manjaro is NOT Debian, however...granted. It is a one off, and yes, it's NOT as helpfull as one of the *Buntu sisters

I mainly use AntiX (Debian based) on my 10" netbooks - http://antix.mepis.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

(Also, I have OpenBSD 5.7 on one of them. )

1 members found this post helpful.

Bump on what fatmac said. My 9 inch atoms fly on AntiX and there are videos to show all the neat install options also.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFW...KlXW5uE9opXukQ

Install video for 13 is OK for using when installing 15.

Most netbooks can be upgraded to 2GB RAM, I imagine that would broaden your horizons a bit.

meh, i could probably upgrade it to 2gb RAM, but with only an atom N270 and GMA950 graphics there are way more bottlenecks than just RAM, id like to focus getting my tegra 3 tablet (which has a keyboard dock too) up and running instead which needs a new motherboard, thatll be more worth the money spent

ill do some research on antix, which desktop environment/window manager are you running on it?

also, my comments about the crappy desktop environment i tried on manjaro was one of their netbook community builds that had some stupid unity-esque type of DE

AntiX 'full' uses IceWM as standard, but also has Fluxbox, which is what I use.

I have an old Asus eee-pc running as a Linux desktop, with external keyboard/mouse and monitor I have current Debian Sid with Xfce running on it, and it runs fine with that. I don't see the need for anything else. Debian is what I'm used to, and it runs as fast as any other distro will. It's the DE that slows things down, not the kernel. If you stay away from Gnome3, Trinity, and other bloated DE's, any Linux distro will run well.

hmm, looking more into antix it looks like a distro that has been designed to do pretty much exactly what im looking for, and since its debian based, upgrades and new software is a breeze.. i think ill try it with icewm to see how i like it, cant fluxbox be configured with a taskbar, start menu, and desktop too and function the same way (but with more support as flux seems to be way more popular)

I'd recommend AntiX with Icewm. The installer asks you to choose which Debian repository to use - Stable, Testing, or Unstable. Ice is marginally lighter than Fluxbox and a little more configurable. Of course, I may be prejudiced: Ice was the first GUI I ever used, way back when, and I still have a soft spot for it!

double bumpin' fatmac...Antix brought spark to an otherwise to-be-junked PC that now serves as a synthesizer...
one up fatmac

well then, antix it is

tried antix and running it off a USB alone is faster than XP installed on the HDD with about the same type of look and feel