eeepc 901 windows xp.....

searchlight123

.....lying in a draw unused. it has only a 12gb ssd hard drive but would like to make use of it as it is in immaculate condition and fancy a little project.

i'm confused between all the linux OS's out there. with this machines minimal spec and small storage ssd (about 8gb free at the moment) what would be the suggested linux to install. i would like it to act and look as much like windows as poss as i can't get my head around some of the screenshots of linux i have seen online.

also, how do i wipe windows from it and run only with linux (due to limited storage).

many thanks for any pointers.

Neil_Jones

IIRC the EEEPC series already had a flavour of Linux on them when they were sold and you can reset them by holding down F9 before you power the unit on and following the onscreen instructions - assuming that is they still have the original OS on them. This may or may not work if Windows has been installed on it, I did have one but it needs a new keyboard and I haven't used it for ages.

[Deleted User]

PIXEL (https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/introducing-pixel/) is a extremely lightweight Debian-based operating system. Or just plain old Debian with the LXDE GUI.

I would just format the drive and install it fresh. You can always put XP back on again if you still have the serial key sticker.

esuhl

Neil_Jones wrote: »

IIRC the EEEPC series already had a flavour of Linux on them when they were sold and you can reset them by holding down F9 before you power the unit on and following the onscreen instructions - assuming that is they still have the original OS on them. This may or may not work if Windows has been installed on it, I did have one but it needs a new keyboard and I haven't used it for ages.

There were two versions of the EEE 901 -- one with 12GB storage and Windows XP, and one with 20GB storage and Asus' own GNU/Linux distro.

I bought the 20GB/Linux one. The EEE Linux distro is so buggy and unsupported that I couldn't even upgrade the installed packages from a clean installation without encountering major problems. It's completely unusable.

I tried Windows XP, but it was so slow as to be equally unusable -- especially with an antivirus installed.

I had great success in installing Arch Linux on the device. Arch used to support both 32 and 64-bit processors, but recently dropped 32-bit support. The Arch32 project takes over where 32-bit Arch left off.

https://www.archlinux.org/
https://www.archlinux32.org/

tonygold wrote: »

with this machines minimal spec and small storage ssd (about 8gb free at the moment) what would be the suggested linux to install. i would like it to act and look as much like windows as poss as i can't get my head around some of the screenshots of linux i have seen online.

GNU/Linux doesn't act like Windows. There's no getting round that.

The good thing about Arch/Arch32 is that you can install whatever desktop manager you like (i.e. the GUI) or none at all. XFCE is what I use as it is lightweight and simple -- it looks a bit like Windows XP's desktop.

To be honest, if you want GNU/Linux to work like Windows, then... maybe GNU/Linux isn't something that you'd enjoy. If you want Windows, stick with Windows -- maybe upgrade to a faster laptop so it performs better?

tonygold wrote: »

also, how do i wipe windows from it and run only with linux (due to limited storage).

The installation process will involve repartitioning and formatting the drive with a Linux filesystem, which will wipe Windows (and everything else).

toshi

tonygold wrote: »

.....lying in a draw unused. it has only a 12gb ssd hard drive but would like to make use of it as it is in immaculate condition and fancy a little project.

i'm confused between all the linux OS's out there. with this machines minimal spec and small storage ssd (about 8gb free at the moment) what would be the suggested linux to install. i would like it to act and look as much like windows as poss as i can't get my head around some of the screenshots of linux i have seen online.

also, how do i wipe windows from it and run only with linux (due to limited storage).

many thanks for any pointers.

You may want to try a lightweight flavour of Ubuntu, Lubuntu to fit within 12GB hard disk size

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu

A more usable system would have:

• 512 MHz processor or faster, 32 or 64 bits;
• 512 MB of RAM;
• 6 GB hard drive;
• no fancy graphics

This is a bit like Windows XP interface. you won't be confused.

When you install Lubuntu, you will be asked to keep windows or wipe out (i.e. Lubuntu only)
I would suggest to download Version 16.04.3 LTS 32bit version iso.
http://lubuntu.me/downloads/

There are many GNU/Linux distributions, have a look if you are interested.
https://distrowatch.com/

Happy computing! (from LiuxMint

searchlight123

toshi wrote: »

You may want to try a lightweight flavour of Ubuntu, Lubuntu to fit within 12GB hard disk size

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu

A more usable system would have:

• 512 MHz processor or faster, 32 or 64 bits;
• 512 MB of RAM;
• 6 GB hard drive;
• no fancy graphics

This is a bit like Windows XP interface. you won't be confused.

When you install Lubuntu, you will be asked to keep windows or wipe out (i.e. Lubuntu only)
I would suggest to download Version 16.04.3 LTS 32bit version iso.
http://lubuntu.me/downloads/

There are many GNU/Linux distributions, have a look if you are interested.
https://distrowatch.com/

Happy computing! (from LiuxMint

toshi - many thanks for the info given. i will give this a try.