this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
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This might be a controversial take, but for any tightly integrated hardware (especially netbook/chromebook performance tier), any form of video content consumption or >2000s gaming generally mandates a manufacturing date of 2014 or newer with 64 bit support ideally.
I think if this user stuck to a terminal only or XFCE graphic interface (or something similarly lightweight) for usage in something like a server management or exclusively document focused environment, I think this would work swimmingly. But I think modern web browsing would be a bridge too far without a RAM upgrade, and with a 32bit platform, still a bridge too far.
I recently slapped linux on an old (10 years or so) chromebook and you're right. It's a....process to say the least.
what's it good for? not much. It flips around so you can use it as a tablet/touch screen but my god was that like almost a days worth of tinkering to get working correctly. if you flipped the screen over to make it a tablet the screen wouldn't rotate correctly. lots of adjustments just to get it to work. Also you have to keep in mind the storage you have available. mine has all of 16gigs.
So what's it good for? a glorified terminal station that can SSH into my server. I initially went with XFCE but after awhile I figured even THAT was overkill as all I was really using or could use was the terminal. So I slapped Cagebreak on it (honeslty could have just gone with Cage) and use it as a simple termnial station and a glorified jellyfin client via jftui.
Was it worth it? no, but it was more of a hobby project and nothing that I would ever consider as a daily driver at all. It's just an old POS chrome book I can use while laying in bed to watch a movie or tv show from my server and mess around in the terminal.