I recently got a 10 dollar working netbook from a thiftstore. It has 2 ram and is from 2010 but isint the up-gradable version. Im wondering what os to run on it do i go with something like a android build or a linux setup? Im could also use some neat use cases. Ive thought about doing retro game on it but there are possible better solutions?
Assuming you mean 2GB RAM, it will run a full Linux. I was using a 2008-vintage laptop with similar specs as a secondary machine until recently, and it was capable of handling many light workloads. Retro gaming up to the 16-bit era should be fine. 720p video playback from local storage (never tried streaming) was fine. Modern websites were very hard on it, though, so I didn’t normally use it in that capacity.
Just pick a distro that isn’t too bloated, and a desktop environment that’s suited to older machines and doesn’t expect too much of the hardware, and you’ll be fine.
(My laptop still works, by the way. I gave it up because 1. I got a good deal on a machine with much higher specs and 2. I run Gentoo, and compiling a modern version of GCC on a dual-core of that vintage takes longer than you would expect.)