I have a few such netbooks. I’m currently running debian oldstable (bookworm) on them. GuixSD also provides x32, but I still have to try that on slow computers. (Sidenote: maybe old Mesa versions work better for GUI). Ofc, it’s ok for trying BSDs (or maybe experimental stuff like Hurd and 9front).
About usage: you can put it into your garage, workshop, storage room, whereever you wouldn’t want your regular laptop (gets dirty, dusty).
For “desktop” purposes:
- emacs (editing text, taking notes, developing some software, reading email, rss client)
- reading books: epub and especially pdf were made for MUCH slower devices (you should avoid scanned books)
- IRC and matrix (in emacs, for example)
- discord client (yeah, I know, you shouldn’t do it)
- can play 360p H.264-encoded videos (you could use a smartphone for that, but I don’t)
- play mp3, act as a radio and play music or podcasts from the internet
- SSH and other remote access stuff
- testing whether software you write could run on slow hardware.
- it is a terrible experience to run a browser, but it works. I could browse the catalogue of a local library from it
- if something was doable in the 90s, the machine can handle it (mine came with diablo 1 installed)
As others already wrote, it’s also good for homeservers (web/gemini/gopher, git, mumble, irc bouncer).
If it is an actual nettop, and not a netbook, it probably has a mini-itx board with PCI on it, which makes it able to test/use old PCI cards. I used it for that purpose a little bit (there are better options, PCIe->PCI bridges). The atom D525 nettop board I have also has a mini pcie slot, which I converted into a full-sized one. Now it has a similarly slow Radeon HD 6450 in it, which helps it play videos. Should work up to 1080p, but now I realize I haven’t actually tried that.
I’ve been running debian sid on desktop for 4 years, I think. Yes, I don’t care if it breaks. I wanted to try debian and didn’t want to use old packages at that point. These days I don’t really need the latest things. I recently switched to testing - I only needed to replace a few words in a few files in /etc. I didn’t even need wiki or anything for that, because testing is almost like sid. If this doesn’t break on me majorly, I might not switch and just replace “testing” with “forky”. I’m really satisfied with debian.
Others already explained basically everything. I’d like to elaborate and offer a few examples to support them.
On potential users:
The people who look for distros to try are seen as newbies by linux users, and therefore are recommended newbie-friendly distros. Also, debian is conservative: it rarely offers shiny new things, so its desktop use isn’t high. There isn’t much to be excited about, so there are no hype cycles. The current “shiny new thing” in debian was the recent change in apt’s interface (now it formats its output into tables, for example), compare that to “atomic” distros. People often still use apt-get (it is in the guides for some reason) instead of apt so even this news in nothing to them.
Furthermore, software development often happens with the latest libraries around. It’s often a great help that Arch ships the latest software. Debian doesn’t have that. While languages these days have their own package managers, having the latest devtools, editors, etc. to try out is harder to do on debian. Therefore, IT students and software engineers have better time on faster-moving distros. Debian is more for the sysops/sysadmin people ( you can leave it there on auto-update and not care for 2 or more years ). The above further restricts its appeal and userbase.
Even further, Debian might be bigger than it seems, as others have pointed it out. Perceived marketshare is often based on desktop use. See EU OS’s FOSDEM presentation on how opensuse has a bigger company behind it than ubuntu.
On “latest drivers”:
On “stability”:
On “ease of use”: