Anyone familiar with eee pc 701sdx linux?

[NERDMAN!]

So, Many a year ago I had an Asus eee pc model 701sdx, And it came with a modified release of xandros on it. Now, My mother wants her pc back up and running and quite frankly she wants a system she's able to use without issue (Basically childproof. Think a system for the technologically oblivious to play board games on).

I recalled that xandros install's desktop manager had what was called "Easy mode" which was a heavily simplified desktop, Ran on a tabbed interface that was rather quite self explanatory and required terminal input to do anything that could cause system damage. This is basically what I want. Light resource footprint and easy mode. Unfortunately I've no clue even what desktop environment that was much less how to install it. Has anyone here seen or heard of a way to put together something even close to what I've described?

[sudodus]

Yes, I have seen it. Maybe Lubuntu Netbook is somewhat similar. It can be selected at the log in screen as an alternative to standard Lubuntu.

Ubuntu with Unity is simple too, but way too resource hungry for her old eee pc model 701. Is there 4 or 9 GB SSD? Lubuntu is possible to squeeze into 4 GB, but you need the alternate iso file (not the desktop iso file).

[NERDMAN!]

ah right, minor miscommunication here, she doesnt have an eee pc, i was just using it as an example for the desktop environment i want. her pc is a desktop but its an old recycled school machine, i'd say equal in spec to an eee pc actually. which is why i want something with a low resource footprint to work with. couldnt recall the exact specs on it but it was enough to run winXP back in its school career.

[sudodus]

My answer is still Lubuntu as the first choice. But you need to check for some specs before we know. If too little horsepower and ram, maybe you can't really do anything but play some retro games on it. If a little more, you can run some really tiny linux distro, but they are not that user friendly.

Please post the cpu and ram specs! It makes it easier to give relevant advice.

You can also have a look at this link http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640

[NERDMAN!]

off the top of my head its looking at 256mb of ram and a 1ghz celeron, but i could be wrong.i'll throw out some detailed info once ive refurbished the innards of it.

[sudodus]

As you can see in the link (in post #4) 256 MB ram is too low to get a really usable system with new software, that can manage modern web pages. You can make it run with Lubuntu. Install from the alternate iso file. But it will be a pain to run. You need at least the double amount of ram.

The processor is also very weak for new software.

[coldraven]

You cheapskate! Buy your Mum something a bit more modern. :)

[NERDMAN!]

dude, all my mother wants is the occasional email with my sister and to play a game of mahjong. dayum man she aint even gonna use any of the new software. all i want is to make sure the machine will do just that without takin ten years to do it. again i must ask if anyone has any ideas.

[sudodus]

Alternative 1.

Try to to get second-hand ram to upgrade to 512 MB. Download the Lubuntu 12.04 alternate iso file. Install without any extra packages, but use Firefox or some light-weight version of it, for example Seamonkey, because they run better with low memory than the default web browser Chromium-Browser right now (such information will change in time, when Chromium-Browser was selected it was the other way around). I think Lubuntu Netbook might be easier than standard Lubuntu (but standard Lubuntu is better for me).

Alternative 2.

Try some of the really light-weight distros, for example Puppy Linux.

[mips]

I would second the opinion to get more RAM as it would make a big difference.

For a lightweight browser Qupzilla is pretty full featured.

[Irihapeti]

I had an old laptop with 256MB of RAM. That was during the time that Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 were being developed, and it struggled even then. Even when I tried the lightest version version that I could find. I hate to think how it would react now, if I still had it.

I eventually gave it an extra 512MB of RAM and that made all the difference. Therefore, I suspect that RAM is going to be the bottleneck in this case.