For a old laptop with Intel atom processor and I think 2gb ram.
Might be overkill (or underkill), but Tiny Core Linux is the most lightweight I know. While having an up to date kernel (6.1.2) and glibc (2.3.6).
What are the minimum requirements? An absolute minimum of RAM is 46mb. TC won’t boot with anything less, no matter how many terabytes of swap you have. Microcore runs with 28mb of ram. The minimum cpu is i486DX (486 with a math processor). A recommended configuration: Pentium 2 or better, 128mb of ram + some swap
Also, I’ll just mention that it all means nothing as soon as you open a browser window. Then all your RAM is gonna be used up anyway.
Sure, play your youtube videos on Lynx.
We all know that’s one of the main things people use browsers for, that’s not work, these days. ;)
You can do a really slim install of Debian that should work. For DE I recommend LXQT.
If you’re feeling adventurous, Alpine might be slightly lighter. It’s a good distro.
Those specs are not going to get you a terribly fast experience, but my laptop runs Debian ok and it’s in the same ballpark.
I’d go for Alpine Linux in such case.
