The Atom is an x86 compliant CPU. It has limitations, in that, at least to my knowledge, it does not have the ability to execute instructions out of order to maintain efficiency, but it was meant for low power operation and not speed.
This should work for Debian, however, I would stick to the 32bit version of Debian or any other distros you try out, as there is no support for 64bit on that CPU.
32-bit Linux can run on any x86 processor equal to or newer than a Pentium II, which covers everything manufactured for over a decade now. What the entire rest of the machine is will be a lot more important.
Googling the model numbers you gave, I see that it is a mini notebook, so very little can be guaranteed about it with any operating system. Notebooks can be strange.
Thanks
i did a g search of mint linux, there was not a wiki on it ? what is mint linux ?.
I am aiming to set up a bare bones Linux for a LAMP server on this puppy for testing only.
maybe install XAMPP .
what do you think , would this puppy be able handle a AMP set up ??.
Thanks
I have an HP Mini (210-2145DX) with an Intel Atom and 1G RAM. Not quite the same as what you've got, but maybe close. I've been running a full desktop copy of SUSE on it since March 2011. (Yes, you read that right -- full.) I haven't had a single complaint, and because I installed the full system, not a pared down version of something, it works as I expected it to.
When I was considering netbooks I loaded a USB drive with a live-CD and used that to see if the computer could at least boot and run some flavour of LINUX.
The only issue that I had with the HP was finding the driver for the wireless 802.11 chip set. A bit of searching and I was able to download the latest driver and once it was in place all worked. Everything else worked 'out of the box.'