I went hunting for a lightweight Linux distribution for old computers. With a CPU running at about 1 GHz and 1GB of RAM, the HP Mini (110-1134CL) I had on hand was the approximate league of a modern Raspberry Pi. I wished for something like Debian-based Raspbian and was delighted to find that the Raspberry Pi foundation does release a Debian distribution for x86 that is a counterpart to Raspbian. This meant much of my knowledge about working with Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi could be applied.

Obviously all the work specific to Pi hardware are absent, such as video playback hardware acceleration and the GPIO pins. Still, I think I’m in better shape here than in many other lightweight Linux distributions, because I believe the Debian roots meant I can draw from the extensive library of drivers.

Installing on the HP Mini (110-1134CL) the installer reminded me of this fact by informing me I would need ucode15.fw. I thought I would have to install it manually but by the time installation completed and I got to Raspberry Pi desktop, WiFi was working. I guess installation was taken care of for me! A huge plus in favor of beginner friendliness of this distribution.

Generally speaking, it worked well on this HP Mini, feeling more responsive than Ubuntu Mate on the same machine. It is still no speed demon, but at least it is no longer an exercise in frustration. My general impression of user experience is on par with a Raspberry Pi 3 but with the notable exception of video playback: lacking the specially tailored hardware accelerated video engine, it can only consistently play YouTube videos at 480p. Trying to run 720p (most closely matching the screen resolution) dropped a lot of frames. This is a downside as so many instructional videos are online now, but 480p should still be enough to get the point across.

Encouraged by this result, I prepared to install on my Dell Latitude X1. Before I erased Ubuntu Mate, though, I wanted to get some objective numbers. I measured Ubuntu Mate boot on the Latitude X1, and the time from power button to desktop ready for user interaction was 2 minutes 37 seconds.

Installing on the Latitude X1 encountered similar driver issues, this time with ipw2200-bss.fw. Again, after informing me, the installer took care of installing it and setting it up without requiring any action from me. And once it was up and running I measured it took only 1 minute 26 seconds. This operating system is ready for user input in almost half the time of Ubuntu Mate.

Repeating the measurement, I found that the younger HP Mini had the performance edge, taking just 58 seconds to go from power button to desktop ready. Both of these numbers are impressive considering both are running mechanical hard drives and not modern flash storage.

With these impressive results, Debian with Raspberry Pi desktop has now become my go-to operating system for computers with old 32-bit Intel CPUs.

During my first pass evaluation of a HP Mini (110-1134CL) I tried a few modern graphical operating system options and failed to find anything satisfactory. Ubuntu Mate is designed to be a lighter weight alternative to mainline Ubuntu, but it still felt sluggish. Chrome OS (available as Neverware CloudReady) now only supports 64-bit CPUs, which excluded old 32-bit machines.

It works fine as a text-only command line machine, but that seems like a shame as it has a perfectly operable screen and video subsystem. All it needs is a Linux distribution even lighter weight than Ubuntu Mate. I’m sure there are many options out there — historically there has never been a shortage of options for Linux distributions, and websites like this one help sort through options.

But I’d rather not learn yet another Linux distribution. I’m already juggling through more than I strictly wanted, plus some time in FreeBSD as part of my FreeNAS explorations. If only there was a Linux variant that I’m already familiar with, optimized for minimalist low end hardware.

The poster child for minimalist low end hardware is the Raspberry Pi, which is so minimalist it doesn’t even have a power switch. Raspbian, their Debian-derived Linux distribution, has been cut down so it runs on Pi hardware less powerful than the cell phones we’re carrying around nowadays. What if someone took that work and put it in a distribution I can run on old x86 computers? At 1GB of RAM and 1GHz CPU, the hardware spec of a HP Mini is quite similar to a Raspberry Pi.

An online search quickly found that such a thing exists. Not only had “someone” done the work, that “someone” is Raspberry Pi foundation itself. This was the result of someone at the foundation thinking of the exact same “What if….?”question, but they thought of it a few years earlier and had the resources to make it happen.

Thus old computers with 32-bit Intel CPU have the option of running what they’re currently calling Debian with Raspberry Pi Desktop. A beginner-friendly super lightweight variant of Debian with almost all of the software packages that come pre-installed on Raspbian. Only Wolfram Mathematica and Minecraft are missing due to licensing. It all sounds very promising. Time to try it on some old 32-bit machines and see how they run.