I upgraded my brothers eee pc from windows 7 to linux Mint mate.
It is one of those eee-pc's without slots for memory banks. (memory is soldered on main board). In task manager I see 740 MB memory and a swap of approx the same size.
It functions, but it is a bit sluggish.
I chose mate over xfce because the eye wants something too.
Now there is a sd-card slot. Is it possible to use that in order to get the thing faster?
Perhaps swap or something?
Anyone any experiance with this?

Hi!
Last year we had an Eee - to slow, at least we donated it to a friend.
Your questions:
1. SDcard slot: I don't see how it should help.
2. Swap: I made many tests (no swap, swap in primary partition, logical partition) and did not found any difference (as normal user).
3. SolydX or Linux Lite are faster - tested on USB (installed!).

Yes, Run a Windows Manager instead of Desktop enviornment. Windows 7, huh. How well did that run?

Install Icewm, Fluxbox, or Openbox in Linux Mint and it may run a lettle faster.
You will probably get lost though using a Windows Manager instead of a Desktop Enviornment
on that eeepc.

Me, I install AntiX or Salix (Openbox 32bit edition) on that thing and run with it.
Heck, This laptop I am posting with is older than your eeepc and I would never install
a full blown Desktop enviornment on it.

I sold both of my eeepcs also. Here was mine before I sold it. It is running LXpanel in JWM with rox desktop which is just a fancy way
to run a Window Manager. Kinda like this other fluxbox screenshot of mine which is a Windows manager also running tint2 taskbar and a conky.

The fluxbox screenshot is also on older computer than your clamshell asus eeepc.
I sold it also.

basically i agree with both previous posters:

- nothing to do on the hardware side of things
- even mate is a bit heavy for less than 1GB of RAM.

you might be best off installing a distro dedicated for old & low-spec hardware.
look around - distrowatch search results for old computers.

I agree on using a window manager instead of full-fledge desktop environment--that can make a world of difference.

My favorite is Fluxbox. You can find the Fluxbox wiki here.

If you feel a need for a desktop, you might try out LXDE. It might run acceptably on that machine.

All of these packages are in the repos. You can install them quite nicely side-by-side, choose among them in the session chooser on the login page, test them out, then choose the one you like.

Thanks for the replies, W7 did not perform at all.
I timed boot and start up takes about 1 minute.
The start of libre-office writer about 20 secs.

I thought it was perhaps possible to speed the thing up by using a fast sd-card as swap-space.
That of course would only help if the accesstime of the sd is faster then hd accesstime.

Anyway, thanks for the responses.

Hans.

these are quite good timings for windows

sorry i didn't fully understand the part with using an sd-card as a swap partition. i guess there's no harm in trying?

If you're pressed for space on the internal drive, then I would recommend using an SD card as swap.

Also, if your internal drive is an SSD, then you do NOT want to put swap on there...the swap would probably completely kill it.

If either of the above apply, then go for the SD card idea. Yes, the swap partition will kill the card (depending on usage, I'd guess anywhere between 6 months and a few years). But SD cards are fairly cheap.

I'd also suggest to adjust the swappiness a bit so that it only swaps when it really NEEDS to.

If the ssd is pcie and removable/unplugabble.

http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/118719..._converter.jpg

That card will run 2 usb drives side by side. One can be root ext2 file system.
The other /home ext2, and swap. Size. read/write speeds, of usb drives are your concern.

Depends on lil bros budget I guess.

I also recall seeing that there is a ZIF (?) port on the inside of some EEEs, accessible from the bottom cover. On those models there's room for a 1.8" hard drive... If yours has that you could throw one of those in there.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for all comments,
I regard this topic closed.

In that case, please mark the thread "Solved" by using the "Thread Tools" menu at the top.

Done, thanks.