Long time Ubuntu user here for 10+ years, however I am stumped and in search of help. My sister bought a small netbook computer basically to check email and other simple computing while she travels a few times a year. It turns out she bought a pretty old system... A Dell Inspiron Mini model #1012. Its old... made in 2012 I think. It has two atom 1.66ghtz CPU's and 2GB of memory.
I cannot install anything worthwhile on this. Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Puppy, Zorin, Linux Mint, Solus, Q4OS, etc. If possible I would prefer to stick with a DEB package based distribution. So far ToriOS is the only linux that will work on his old system but its not really the nicest. I would prefer Xubuntu or Lubuntu but they dont work :( In fact... check this out... ALL of the distros listed above WILL install just fine and I can reboot after install and play with the newly installed OS but after a second or third reboot the OS fails to boot up anymore. Happens with every OS except for ToriOS mentioned before. That one works fine after install. I am also able to go backwards (yes Ive tried A LOT of distros and releases) and install Ubuntu 10.04 on this system and it works GREAT. As you know its no longer supported. I can update the package list and do all the updates however the web browsers are still very outdated and some websites just dont load up. Installing Ubuntu 12.04 works fine, but after reboot it fails. Installing 10.04 and then upgrading to 12.04 all works fine until reboot again. Yesterday I tried Linux Mint 13 (maya i think) and that failed after reboot.
So Im looking for an Ubuntu or DEB based distro that will work on this old netbook. I cant say Im a fan of ToriOS and would prefer any flavor of Ubuntu if possible. Any tips or tricks or recommendations? Thank you!