I have great nostalgia for those old underpowered Windows 8.1 era Atom tablets. Unfortunately, they're all bricks now, since Windows 8.1 is discontinued/worthless, and they can't keep up with Windows 10. Even "Tiny 11" looks to take up 2 gb of RAM on startup, from what I've seen, which is a non-starter.
I've been tinkering with the idea of trying to revive one with Linux. It would be more of a hobby, at least at first, since I don't think it would work well enough for one of those old devices to become my daily driver or anything like that.
I thought this would be the place to ask about that. Has anyone had any experience using Linux on those old devices? If those old Atom chips are too underpowered even for Linux, then I won't bother. I've never used Linux before, and I'm afraid that this might be the wrong way to get into the game--it might be too big of a challenge to try to pick up.
But I'm kind of hoping against hope that someone out there will chime in and say, "I installed a custom version of Ubuntu on my old Dell Venue 8 Pro, and now I can use it to do everything it was meant to do, and it runs even more smoothly than it did on Windows 8.1. Here's a link to the distro with three easy steps you can follow to make your old VivoTab Note 8 come to life again!" Or at least someone will have tried it and have some experience to share?
Thanks in advance!
I think it's a great project if you have one of those devices and a bit of time on your hand - I wouldn't worry whether it's too difficult, just trying to boot up a live usb should at least work and then you can see where you can go from there. You'll just need an appropriate OTG adapter to plug in a regular USB (and ideally also mouse and keyboard for initial setup) while also charging in order to get started.
Now you've teased me, I hope I can withstand the draw :D it's probably not worth it to specifically search and buy one of these devices considering the performance comparison here for instance: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_atom_x5_z8500-vs-intel_processor_n100 😁 (and that's for the slightly faster x5 cherry trail, most of them have the older baytrail or the x3 cherry trail) - unless you really want that (admittedly really nice) 8 inch form factor.