Turning a 10.1" netbook to a somewhat usable PC.

Joseph Pornillos — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 03:58:10 +0000

Trying to turn a very slow netbook (Samsung N150 Plus w/ 2GB DDR3 RAM & N455 Atom processor) into a (somewhat) usable portable productivity machine

Specs Rundown:

10.1-inch netbook
Atom N455 - 64-bit processor, 1 core / 2 threads operating at 1.67 GHz, with 512KB L2 Cache, released in 2010
2 GB DDR3 (max)
Upgraded to 120 GB SSD

Distro: Started with MX Linux, then switched to Ubuntu MATE, and finally switched to antiX (runit version for faster boot time and support)

Rolled back to Kernel 5.10 (better compatibility for older CPUs)
Using IceWM as the window manager
Installed TLP for battery management
Using mpv + yt-dlp to watch YouTube videos, set to 480p and include h264 to reduce lag and CPU usage
Using Chromium
Installed lightweight apps (MComix for manga/comic reading, Anki for daily Kanji study, CherryTree for note taking, and mpv for general media usage)

Results:

Lightweight browsing is doable and somewhat smooth.
Modern sites are barely usable (Facebook is very laggy), YouTube (somewhat usable, but much better if used with mpv, can even play live videos without any issues).
Videos play without issue as long as they’re at 480p.
LibreOffice is smooth.
Surprisingly, the battery can last 3-4 hours with heavy usage.
N455 can also handle retro games, but I haven't personally tried it yet. I’ll try an Arch setup soon once I get more Linux experience. So far, it’s very usable for my needs, and it's easy to carry at work.

DEV Community: Joseph Pornillos