@scarlett it depends what the CPU is in the eee, but there's at least an evens chance that it doesn't support 64 bit anyway, in which case Debian just fell out of consideration

of the 32 bit distributions remaining:

• antiX is optimised for smaller, slower machines, but i've not used it myself - it's next up ;-)

• Void Linux works well on 32 bit, but it has a tendency to remove software all over the place. rolling distributions suck :-(

• Alpine is also optimised for tiny machines, but its installer is horrible! and also its libc is musl, which makes dropping in any non-free software you might need (which invariably expects glibc) annoying (if it works with gcompat) or impossible (if it doesn't)

• i haven't used Slackware for aeons, but it always used to Just Work, and its installer is much less horrible than Alpine's

• one of the Puppy derivatives might be worth a look too

• Haiku also supports 32-bit machines, has ssh, and can do some Internet stuff through its WebPositive browser (though supermarket shopping and banking will likely not work), if you fancy doing something different

as it happens i also have a similarly spec'd netbook. it's currently running a pretty ancient version of Slitaz (which i would have recommended a decade ago, but... that's how long it's been since it saw a serious update, so no longer) and all three DOS-compatible operating systems (MS-DOS, OpenDOS and FreeDOS)