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Slitaz - the only OS that I liked which runs well on a 10" Samsung single-core Intel Atom netbo

It's always good to post some positive news ...

I have a Samsung N145 Plus 10" netbook, made in 2011. It has 2GB maximum of installed RAM and a dual-threaded single core CPU @ 1.66GHz. I've tried several lightweight distros on this machine, but Slitaz (edition 5 rolling, 32-bit) is the only one I've found that works really well. The 64-bit version works very well too, but I used 32-bit as it seemed to use less battery power. I've been using Slitaz-5 since September 20, 2019. Even though I have between 400 and 500 packages installed, it only tales up around 48MB of RAM, while idling. My battery charge lasts longer at 7 hours, compared to only 4 hours when Manjaro-xfce 64-bit was installed on this netbook.

In my tests, Antix-17.4.1 came a close second, but the main disadvantages with it (for my needs) was that it wasn't a rolling distribution, and found it annoying that I couldn't leave files on the Desktop screen view (only in a Desktop folder). Also Slitaz-5's desktop appearance is much more polished. Also, the newly released antiX-19 edition, doesn't run as well on this netbook, compared to antiX-17. I did try Void Linux, a great distro, but it seems too complicated for a 'linux-newbie' like me. It's interesting to see that there is some recent discussion in the forum about the possibility of using Void as a base for Slitaz in the future, as kernel upgrade issues have already been worked out with Void. I'm sure this move will help Slitaz, in the future, to offer more up-to-date packages.

Well done the Slitaz team, and thankyou for all the help I've received so far, particularly from Mojo, Ceel & Alexej - I look forward to staying with Slitaz for as long as possible ...

terrybull

Member

Registered: 2011-11-06

Posts: 127

Re: Slitaz - the only OS that I liked which runs well on a 10" Samsung single-core Intel Atom netbo

I agree Mikey that Slitaz is a great distribution. I really don’t know what I’d do without it. I’ve been with it for quite a while now and have several old laptops and the Pentium 2’s I still use Slitaz 3 which runs reasonably well. Others with a bit more steam I use 5 but these are only Pentium 3’s. I even got the touch screen working.  I simply haven’t found anything that will run as well and look so good on these low spec machines.

I have recently acquired a Medion netbook, similar to your Samsung with an Atom cpu. I have been running 5 on it but am currently experimenting with Antix which runs quite well.

I will go back to Stitaz in due course and  fully concur with your comments Mikey, that the help forum is second to none.

Guest

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Re: Slitaz - the only OS that I liked which runs well on a 10" Samsung single-core Intel Atom netbo

Which model of Medion netbook do you have? Does it have Sis graphics ?

I have the MIM2080 model - it has the IDE (not SATA) hard drive inside, which hints at its age. It's a bit of an unusual machine as the Sis graphics card is not recognized by many of the distros I tried. I haven't tried Slitaz on it.  At present, it has an antiX17/WinXP dual-boot installed on it. 

I tried a Slitaz/WinXP dual-boot on another laptop, but it didn't work - maybe I did something incorrectly, even though I've done Win/Linux dual-boots routinely elsewhere without problems - perhaps Slitaz doesn't recognise XP.  Before you sigh with disbelief, at me still using XP (LOL), I use it for datalogging purposes - all the drivers for my datalogger only seem to work well with XP.

kultex

Administrator

Registered: 2011-03-28

Posts: 1,175

Re: Slitaz - the only OS that I liked which runs well on a 10" Samsung single-core Intel Atom netbo

Note, that slitaz comes only with fbdev + vesa driver. So quite a lot of Grafik cards are supported by one of those 2 drivers. In general it’s recommended, that you install the driver of your video card + mesa - http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:xorg-xvesa

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocessors

Atom with powerVR GPU should be supported - search the forum.

The atom with arm mali GPU, i think is generally not supported...

All atom cpus newer than and includeing  Baytrail are not working - because they need at least kernel 4.4

terrybull

Member

Registered: 2011-11-06

Posts: 127

Re: Slitaz - the only OS that I liked which runs well on a 10" Samsung single-core Intel Atom netbo

Mikey777.

My Medion model is E1210. Date code 03/09. Graphics info is:-

VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:27ae] (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

    Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller [1462:0110]

I have never given Medion any thought in the past and I supose dismissed them as a cheap brand without any justification whatsoever. However  I'm impressed with the build quality. This works perfectly with a decent keyboard and the battery is still giving well over 3 hours, probably 4.