What are some fun or unconventional uses for an old Atom notebook with 2GB RAM?

[diesertypmatthias@lemmy.ml]

Try to flash Coreboot on it.

[eugenia@lemmy.ml]

Server for various open source games that don't require much cpu or ram. E.g. freeciv, battle for wesnoth.

[thefartographer@lemm.ee]

Swap in a new display controller board, get a cheap Bluetooth keyboard and wire the eee PC (maybe?) to the controller board. Then, remove the internal board and drive to make space for an old Android phone on which you can install a Linux distro.

Voila! A "laptop" that you can upgrade whenever you get a new phone or if someone donates a phone to you.

[sturgist@lemmy.ca]

Instead of Debian, why not tinyCore?

[0x0@programming.dev]

As a TV for your kitchen?

[icastfist@programming.dev]

See if it runs either Menuet OS or Kolibri OS, they're about the smallest non-linux OSs I know of.

[bunitor@lemmy.eco.br]

to play with, sure. but in the case of a backup machine, you want something reliable, rock-solid, low maintenance and easy to use, which is why I recommended debian

[qaz@lemmy.world]

You could turn it into a Home Assistant control panel

[tasankovasara@sopuli.xyz]

I recently discovered kmscon: a hardware accelerated utf-8 & emoji capable replacement for the sandard Linux console. Put that on.

[disonantezko@lemmy.sdf.org]

Bad idea, they struggle with YouTube or any video because they don't have hardware decoders for AVC/HEVC.

Maybe can decode by software, something easy on CPU (MPEG1 maybe), and the conversion is done by other machine.

Maybe audio?

Reference: I have one of those Atom netbooks.

[disonantezko@lemmy.sdf.org]

• SliTaz is fun to play and very small.
• Puppy Linux is very capable and there are Debian variants.