Seeking a free OS for 2009 netbook

[fruitcake]

In a last  ditch bid to revive a Toshiba NB netbook, I'm seeking a Linux to work  with Intel Centrino Duo Atom processor and just 2GB RAM. The machine will be used for accessing an ad-free webmail account and little else, i.e. the demands on it will be minimal. The machine is tiny and very portable; the relatively new battery lasts all day, so it's potentially useful.

History:
Windows XP got progressively slower til it became unusable
Ubuntu got progressively slower til it became unusable.
Xubuntu also got progressively slower til it became unusable.
Lubuntu worked well for two years but Lubuntu 16 broke during a system update a few months ago, showing only half the desktop, the other half being letters and numbers. Reloaded Luuntu 16.04.03 from USB which worked normally but half-screen problem returned after update.
Lubuntu 14.04.05 will not install, giving the Lubuntu intro screen but then perpetual blank screen.

I like the look of LinuxMint and will download that next. Any other free lightweight OS I could consider?

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Edited to correct the processor model

[mrcharly-YHT]

I would recommend Mint - choose a lightweight version.

[Gattopardo]

I have an nb550d that runs win 10 with 4gb ram tho.

Is it worth asking on the lubuntu forum and see if there is a driver issue, as it sounds like it and could be the issue with other linus systems as the drivers are shared.

[fuaran]

What about Chromium OS? Though it would probably be better with more RAM.

[Gattopardo]

What about Chromium OS? Though it would probably be better with more RAM.

Does it need internet access tho for all the features?

[hubner]

I've got several Samsung netbooks.

Some are single core and some are duo core but all are Intel Atom 1.6GHz, and being netbooks have a maximum of 2GB RAM.

OSs include XP, Ubuntu 11.04 Natty, Win7, Ubuntu Mate (16.04.4 LTS Xenial Xerus 64-bit).

They all still work and none of them have got slower, it does sound like there's something wrong with the OP's setup.

[mzjo]

My go-to Linux in these situations is Puppy, which I am currently using on  an Atom270 equipped netbook with only 1Gb of RAM loaded onto a USB stick (because I am still using some parts of the original XP system and I don't want to double boot from a dodgy hd). I have installed it on one laptop in the past but since the drive was broken I couldn't run it for long enough to fully test it as an hd installed system. Puppy seems to be very tolerant of hardware, it has worked for me on machines that returned total darkness with other distributions (I have never managed to have a live working Mint for example when I wanted it and several others come in the same category - all hardware incompatibilities).

Edit; I burn the iso to a cd and run that live to use the Puppy installer to install to USB - which involves having a machine available to run the OS on live CD. The weakness is that if you have a netbook in 32 bit you need a bigger box that will run the 32 bit OS as well and not all 64 bit machines will. I am too much of a numpty to go straight from iso to USB stick although it is probably fairly straightforward to do. If I were installing to the netbook hard drive I would do it off my stick.

[fuaran]

What about Chromium OS? Though it would probably be better with more RAM.

Does it need internet access tho for all the features?

I think there's now apps that work offline for most features.
Anyway fruitcake said they only wanted to access webmail, so something based on a browser would make sense. There is a Gmail Offline app.

[fruitcake]

Just installed Linux Mint 19 and now using it to post this. It worked straight out of the box and it's sprightly compared with what I remember of the previous.

I suspect the gradually-slowing-down came as a result of incremental updates and version upgrades over successive months, as the OS gradually came to need more system resources. It's standard behaviour with Windows, but I noticed it with full fat Ubuntu too. Didn't happen with Lubuntu - instead an update completely broke it.

I'd forgotten about PuppyLinux. I've used it in the past to revive old PCs so it's good to see the community is still developing it following Barry Kauler's retirement. The interface always looked a bit, erm, quirky but, boy, was it a fast OS.

Anyway, looks like I'll have a year or two more of use out of this netbook.

[fruitcake]

Update: LinuxMint 19 didn't work properly with one of my USB sticks - it failed to eject it, or at least it threw up error messages to that effect. So I have installed the previous version (LinuxMint 18.3) instead. That's working fine so far.

It's handy that LinuxMint comes bundled with plenty of software packages, including GIMP and LibreOffice, so I don't have to install them from the repositories.