For the past few years I have been tinkering with an old eeepc 701 (4G surf? The names are kinda convoluted). Obviously it's pretty limited in what it can do, but it has been much more capable than I thought it would be. At first I tried to find a normal lightweigh distro but that was a nonstarter. Even if it fit on the 4GB ssd (soldered, in this model, and the PCI express socket isn't installed either) the UI was always way too large for such a small screen. Even Puppy Linux had this problem. I played with tinycore for a bit, but it was way to complex for a relative noob like me. So of course my next thing was to try antix-net and try to build up a functioning full desktop from that point. It went pretty well! I learned tmux and all that. But I never managed to get the x-server up and running.
But then I discovered herbstluftwm and thought I'd give it a go. I started with antix-base, and I've been poking at that. It's pretty good! The UI can be really compact, which is great on such a low res display. And while the trackpad is working nicely the keyboard controls are great. I may end up trying this setup on my more modern netbook (a Starlabs Star Lite MkII) as well. But I may end up using this little machine more now. It's pretty fun!
