GigaByte T1028M with Debian Buster

I bought this small netbook about 10 years ago(2008) and my grandma was using it for Skype in the last 5+ years. I got her a tablet recently as the netbook was getting unsupported and quite slow (WinXP, 32 bit only).

When I bought it I've installed Debian on it and kept the WinXP available on a small resized partition. It was a pain back then to get some of the hardware working, e.g. the touch screen and the Elantech touchpad.

When I got it back I decided to update it to an up-to date Debian and since Buster was coming in a few months it was the candidate. I expected everything to be working out-of-the box but unfortunately it wasn't. So I've decided to put down this little article as a reminder.

Elantech touchpad not working

The multitouch mouse was not working after default Debian Buster install so:

# Add the following kernel parameter to /etc/default/grub
i8042.noloop=1

Suspends on each 10 seconds before logging-in

# Make sure you have this in /etc/systemd/logind.conf
HandleLidSwitch=ignore

Hardware

• The processor is very slow - Intel Atom N270, 1.6 GHz, Single core with HyperThreading
• HDD is very very slow. I will probably change it with a small SSD laying around.
• Only 1GiB DDR2 RAM . Upgradeable to 2GiB (one DIMM socket only supporting 2GiB)
• I think the mouse is generating interrupts, so "paste" does not work in the GUI (currently Cinnamon)
• The touch screen worked with no additional configuration
• It has BlueTooth, SD CardReader, Internal 3g modem with a SIM card slot, Camera

Keyboard

Bulgarian phonetic keyboard layout does not work with the default keyboard type for a US locale. I had to choose Acer laptop .

BIOS

BIOS update to latest version - May 10th 2010, ver.FD , is supposed to fix some problems, e.g.:

• Add SSD flash drives support
• WiFi card On by default (confirmed)

To upgrade the BIOS I've used Grub chainload to FreeDOS .

Desktop environment and software

Desktop environment

I've tried all offered desktop environments to choose what works best.

• Gnome is very slow and eats too much memory
• KDE/Plasma is my favorite on the desktop. It mostly works but is sluggish from time to time on this tiny CPU.
• I've not experimented too much with Cinammon/LXDE

I've stuck with MATE as it works relatively fast and is lightweight. I was also able to set it up to my preferences with very little configuration .

Boot manager

• I've chosen lightdm as it seems fast and lighweight
• gdm is sluggish
• sddm not that much but still slower than lightdm

Web browsers

At the time of install chromium was not available in Buster. So I've set up a mixed Buster/Sid system in order to be able to use it from Sid. It seems that ffmpeg dependencies were blocking its Buster presence.

• Firefox works but
• Chromium looks faster. Heavy sites like Facebook are slow. Youtube plays videos in its 360p resolution fine. 480p also works.