Install an alternative OS to Windows CE

Question

I've an EASY PC E700 WinCE Series. Windows CE 6.0 is installed on it, but it's very awful! It doesn't let me see videos on Youtube and Adobe Flash can't be installed.

I surfed the Web to search an alternate OS (I also searched for another web browser, and I found Opera Mini, but it's the same installed on phones, so it's not so good for netbooks), but I don't understand if Debian (or other Linux based OSs) can be installed on this machine.

This is its hw (if you can call it so):

• CPU: VIA WM VT8500 ( ARM 926EJ-S )
• RAM: 128MB DDR2
• 2GB NAND FLASH

According to this answer it can't be installed, but it seems Android can. Unluckily I've not found a valid "document" explaining how to install it. I've found only a tutorial about easy_linux, but the same developer says it's bugged.

What do you suggest me? Ok, as well as throwing it out the window! :P

Answer 1

Hmm, your machine might indeed be able to run some flavor of Linux. Here are my comments on this though :

• It is very, very likely that getting a proper Linux environment to run on the thing will take you a huge amount of time
• Hardware support on Linux might not be very good (for instance some peripherals might not work)
• The computing power of this device is very, very low. No matter the software, the hardware is not powerful enough to stream YouTube videos.

With all this in mind, I think the most efficient solution for you would be to buy a cheap (but recent) Atom-based, Ubuntu-supported Netbook.