You need something like DamnSmallLinux, not Debian. Debian users about 800 MB of RAM with XFce, on a clean boot. It requires a minimum of 2 GB with a modern browser (one tab, 4+ GB with more tabs). DamnSmallLinux uses about 128 MB RAM on a clean boot, and with the Netfront browser about half a gig. Definitely better for such a laptop than any modern distro.

Maybe try Openbox instead of XFCE. Can't promise it'll add much memory but with 1gb RAM I guess every bit counts?

Edit: just had a quick look around, and it looks like your machine can be upgraded to a whopping 2gb RAM... It's still not great, but it is a 100% increase in memory.

Edit 2: I'm not actually recommending you buy RAM from memorystock.com, it just turned up at the top of my search results. The page should give you the type and version you'll need to look for, though.

SSD upgrade

If you use mechanical hard drive in it, it worth a try to replace it with an SSD. After that, Debian should run much better.

JWM is my suggestion. It's a floating window manager (not tiling) that doesn't require almost any knowledge or key bindings to use and it has all necessary stuff included out of the box afaik. You can also use xdgmenumaker to make the right click/Start menu better.

Try puppy linux ?

either you go the easy route and use a distribution targeted towards low spec systems like damn small linux or you go the difficult route and implement the same measures that they implement onto your debian installation.

last time i was in your situation i ended up doing both and i'm glad i did because my version of the build never worked as well as the custom distro.

could always give antix linux a shot

If that's one of those old 10" netbooks, I had good experiences running dwm and xmonad on mine back in the day (had an Acer and later an MSI Wind U120(?)). Typically ran all my apps maximized, one per desktop. Firefox did okay, but this was around 2010-2012. Mostly stuck with terminal apps and it was more than snappy enough.

Some screenshots from days past...

Someone suggested antix. I second that. Try it. They got 32 bit version.

It seems like you've got plenty of choices already, but how about an OS that's already been cut down to work on the limited RAM of a Raspberry PI? It bills itself as a good alternative for limited hardware.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/raspberry-pi-desktop/

Oh yeah, I completely forgot, that laptops real old, so go ahead and regrease the cpu.

AntiX

I have that exact machine in my electronics "graveyard".

Peppermint OS was my GO-TO for speed and driver support out of the box. You can also stick in a 2GB SODIMM of ram. It will only recognize 1.5GB but still 50% more ram.

Try antix. its requirements are 256mb ram. And it's actually usable.

You can try something like antiX but it won't do good as a desktop. I use my netbook as a home server with pi-hole in it.

Looking up the specs of a D270, looks like the memory is upgradable.

It also looks like the Intel Atom N2600 it has (from my reading) is actually a 64-bit processor

I'd probably say you shouldn't have much trouble finding a bigger DDR3 memory stick for it for dirt cheap or free from an e-wasted notebook

Ultimately it depends if the performance loss you're finding is memory limited or CPU limited right now, but I would think that giving it 2 or 4GB + giving it 64-bit would go a long way

Compile your own kernel for those atom processors and they work much better.

It’s not hard, there’s a text interface for it where you just pick what to do from a list.

Zram

Oooh. So I keep a Dell Mini 10 (1GB RAM, ~1GHz Atom) around with Haiku on it. It's brilliant! The UI is super snappy even on such an old machine, and I can even run pretty modern software on it. I used it yesterday to work on my website a bit. :)

I have a similar device Intel atom, 1gb RAM. I installed arch and use it as a headless computer (without DE/WM). If I need WM I use sway. Use a minimal browser like Qutebrowser. Although it would also run like shit but better than chrome/firefox.

I have a similar but dual core Atom netbook. The thing I did was put an SSD into it, and then installing bare Debian. I chose no graphical system from the installer. From there I installed i3 as the window manager and launched it with an automatic login script checking if I was on TTY1.

That's all I did, basically keeping the stuff the little thing has to run to an absolute minimum, and a fully fledged desktop environment would have set it on fire.

@maliciousonion personally I'd go with Debian + IceWM on that. Works pretty well.

Antix linux is a very begginer friendly distro with very light specs

On a laptop that old, I highly recommend a 32 bit distro.

Q4OS with Trinity: https://q4os.org/

Antix https://antixlinux.com/

DSL https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

You could also enable ZRAM If it is not already.

Use Dietpi as your main distro, do a minimal install, install sway and then your usual stuff.

t. Got a orange pi zero 3 w/ 1GiB of ram, did exactly as my suggestion implies and everything works as intended.

I am currently running Antix on my Acer Aspire One D255 with mixed results, Falkon to browse the "modern" web, and netsurf for simple websites, can't play 1080p videos smoothly so I have to first resize them with ffmpeg (it takes a long time but it's doable), other stuff like libreoffice works flawlessly.

I have something like that running Haiku. Try it, you'll be surprised.