this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Submit screenshots of all your *NIX desktops, themes, and nifty configurations, or submit anything else that will make ricers happy. Maybe a server running on an Amiga, or a Thinkpad signed by Bjarne Stroustrup? Show the world how pretty your computer can be!
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It's an Acer Aspire 5742z: a chunky old laptop from 2009.
It requires proprietary WiFi drivers and only has one working USB port because the other two are on a separate board connected to the motherboard by a ribbon cable that seems to have shrunk by a millimetre or two over the years, so it no-longer reaches the contacts.
The keyboard has a decent amount of travel and it's easy to clean with compressed air. However, the keys are a bit harder to press than on other keyboards I have, so it's easy to miss out letters when typing quickly. It's also difficult to put the keys back on once removed; but at least they are removable.
The performance is okay, and I had to pull some extra RAM out of another machine to get it to run smoothly. This machine originally only had 3GB. However, it is easy to upgrade and repair.
To be honest, you'd probably be better off with a late-2000s ThinkPad or a mid-2010s MacBook.
Oh damn! Yeah, no, the old Atom series will be slow on anything other than, like, Puppy Linux.
Here are a few distros to try:
And here are some software substitutions:
You will be able to run Firefox and Chromium, but they will be somewhat sluggish and likely to freeze or crash, in my experience.
Also, the suckless tools are really good for this. Back on my old Raspberry Pi, I used to be able to compile
standsurfin under a minute, anddwmran brilliantly.~Source: my old Raspberry Pi, although arm-based, and my old MacBook had similar specs.~
Hey, if you can make it work, it would be a hell of a cool system. Very hacker-y.