Puppy, Porteus, antiX, Q4OS, Slax run on 32-bit x86 and are supposed to be under the 256 MiB RAM mark.
Zorin Lite and Xubuntu ~512MiB.
Mint, LXDE and Bunsenlabs ~1GiB.
YMMV
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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@ everyone recommending debian: it no longer supports 32 bit x86 machines: https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#reduced-support-for-i386
Antix,Debian ,arch i386 project
i wouldn't recommend debian since they've dropped 32 bit support in trixie, their latest release. the previous release, bookworm, still supports 32 bits archs, but it eol's less than a year from now
This is not true. (Edit: nevermind, I was wrong)
They're dropping support for i586 and below. 32-bit systems with i686+ processors will still run fine.
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#reduced-support-for-i386
From trixie, i386 is no longer supported as a regular architecture: there is no official kernel and no Debian installer for i386 systems
[...]
Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to trixie. Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as amd64, where possible, or retiring the hardware.
Not all 32-bit systems are i386. For example, my 32-bit Debian thinkpad runs Trixie just fine. Because it's i686 which is still supported.
So again, Debian 13 isn't dropping 32-bit support. Just i586 support and below.
Not all 32-bit systems are i386
but the debian i386 architecture means all 32 bit x86 processors. there's no "i686" build of debian
there are no i586 or i686 kernel or iso available, you can look for them. i386 packages only exist for compatibility reasons, so you can run 32 bit applications on amd64 machines. please read the release notes
but the debian i386 architecture means all 32 bit x86 processors.
That was very confusing to me. I'm sure they have their reasons, but calling it something like x86 would've been more clear to me.
The original x86 platform. Now requires "686" class CPU. Unsupported in trixie and newer except in chroots on amd64 hosts.
I'm sure they have their reasons
maybe compatibility reasons. i guess they used to support i386 back in the day and didn't want to break the couple of systems that were installed on bo and have been upgrading ever since
I was wrong. Thank you. And I don't have Trixie on the 32-bit Thinkpad, it was my other laptop.
Lets say I had 8 chromebooks 4gb ram idk CPU and their all working. What realistically could I do with them? Some lenovo some google.
... Run ChromeOS? :P which is basically android. Maybe run Linux if the bootloader is unlockable
slackware, netbsd, openbsd
edit: i forgot tinycore, you gotta try that too
+1 for NetBSD it’s such a great OS for ressource limited platforms. Rough edges by today standards but it worth a try on OP’s PC.
Edit : would you please post something like neofetch screenshot when your eeepc is up and running ? :)
Debian. Just Debian. No drama.
Not Debian 13. https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#reduced-support-for-i386
Also note that the Debian team uses i386 to mean what we think of by 32 bit x86, not just CPUs from the very old i386 generation. https://wiki.debian.org/i386
Since I doubt the latest and greatest drivers interest you, I suggest debian. Might as well profit from extreme stability and reliability
Debian has dropped support for 32 bit in Debian 13.
Use debian 12 then, again, its not like you need the latest and gratest
Debian Security Support ends in 9 months and the LTS's supported platforms haven't been announced. It could very well be that in 9 months the i386 version of Debian 12 stops getting security updates. https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
Bunsenlab Linux..
Though don't expect miracles, that cpu is too slow for the modern internet. It's not usable for web browsing on any OS.
I think it should be okay. I have a pentium M machine that did alright with web browsing on Bunsenlabs. Had 2 gb of ram. I used an original eeepc and an MSI u230 wind with the same cpu. The atom and pentium M are about the same
When? Currently 240p youtube will produce frame drops on these. Typical javascript laden web pages can take minutes to render. I guess it largely depends on the websites you plan to visit. Phoronix will work ok.
I also have a gpu in it (ATI mobility Radeon 9700) so there is that. Web browsing was slow but not impossible. I did use discord with my old pentium M machine. (only web bc 32 bit). YouTube did work but not well. I was using smplayer for YouTube. Also this was before everything went to av1 encoding and I haven't tried it since.
slow internet could make for a fun opportunity to play around with a text-based browser from the terminal like Lynx, w3m, and browsh.
Something with LXDE or XFCE Desktop Environment, that is usually the DE for low-spec distros.
OpenSUSE has a 32-bit build.
Running modern web browsers is no fun.
I assume there will be a not too distant date in the future when Firefox ESR drops 32bit altogether...
My eepc is also 32 bit with 2gb of RAM. I did Debian 12 with LXDE from the net installer and it works really well.
I've had good luck with Antix on very old machines.
One of the OG eeepc is what got me into Linux. The distro it shipped with was ass (it was a Linux variant) so I went hopping and discovered Puppy Linux and a bunch of others. Ended up sticking with !# (crunchbang) which later renamed to BunsenLabs and I still run it on most of my devices to this day.
MX runs fine, but applications such as browsers are very slow because of the old CPU 😐
antiX
That said this machine will not be able to cope with the www of 2025.
I loved my Eee PC so much.
I’ve been watching and hoping for a modern ARM equivalent, but haven’t seen anything quite right so far.
Lots of good recommendations here. I use antiX on an ASUS EeePC X101CH and it works pretty well. I think the last release is a year old, though.
+1 for Gentoo
Gentoo will work if you have the time to work through the install, and stick with provided binaries for large packages (or have a lot of patience with updates).
Hey Droechai
How about trying Sparklinux
They have stable, oldstable and oldoldstable images.
based on debian.
I use sparky on both my raspberry pi 3B's.
Sparky 7 still supports i686 architecture (32 bit).
ISO MinimalGUI i686 (32 bit)
I'm not familiar with Eee PCs but I'm assuming you'd want something lightweight. Q4OS has a 32-bit version available.
FreeBSD offers a 32 bit variant still via their i386 image.
Expect a small learning curve if you've never used UNIX, but most things are similar enough that you'll be fine. If you're ok picking up the FreeBSD handbook.
Depending on the age of the EEE, you might run into problems because the old low end CPU doesn't support instruction set extensions that are assumed to be present by distros nowadays. I think it was SSE2...?
Another issue others are not addressing is the memory limitations of 32bit software. I am facing it now with a large database that is stuck in a 32 bit world. You may have issues finding 32 bit builds of software as well.