I just found this old netbook, a Positivo Mobile M900, which has 512MB of RAM and only 4GB of flash memory. It surprisingly still works, and I'm hoping to use it for basic tasks like browsing the web, checking emails, and watching YouTube. Is it realistic to run a Linux distro with such limited specs?
2 Answers
You might want to look into using NetBSD, but be ready to do some tinkering. It could be a better fit for your device’s specs compared to mainstream Linux.
Running modern browsers on 512MB of RAM is pretty tough. Even one tab can take up around 750MB of memory. You’d need to use a more lightweight browser with JavaScript disabled to make browsing feasible. Plus, most Linux distros require more than 4GB of storage, which is a major hurdle for this netbook.
Tinycore or Alpine could be good options too if you want something really minimal.