I needed a small Linux computer to run rtl_433 and remembered these Pi Model As, left over from some long ago client's project.
I guess it's admirable that the Pi foundation still supports 10+ year old hardware, unfortunately it's a real struggle in 256MB of RAM.The Debian Bookworm-based minimal install actively swaps to the SD card whenever it does anything at all..
OpenWRT to the rescue! Has pre-built images for the Pi SoCs[*], serial console by default, uses a fraction of the RAM and an impressive amount of software is packaged for it. ✨
https://openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspberry_pi
[*] For Ethernet on the A then you probably need to build a custom image with the right kmod-usb-net-XYZ module for your adapter.