For a old laptop with Intel atom processor and I think 2gb ram.
As other have already alluded to, any distro with a lightweight desktop environment should work on that laptop. However, we don't know if it would work out for you; simply for the fact that you haven't given any other information.
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.
Debian stable or testing, with MATE or XFCE or something crazy like WindowMaker (wmaker)!
Arch, with a lightweight desktop environment. If you have time and dedication, obviously.
I've been using Peppermint on my garbage laptop and it made it usable again.
What would you use this laptop for?
I've dealt with similar hardware, using Qtile over a Manjaro base, but had to mostly use CLI/TUI apps. Anything related to web browsing is a pain.
Not sure. But I have other primary laptop. And this laptop is just sitting so I wanted try something with it.
If you just want to play around with it, I highly recommend some arch based distro (because you can find plenty of obscure TUI apps in the AUR) with a window manager (be it tiling like Qtile or stacking like Openbox).
If you want something preconfigured, I've recently found instantOS, which seems to work fine for that usecase.
I use this small laptop mostly for ebooks (using the excellent epy) and music, using one ot the TUI YouTube frontends.
Yes I can use it for reading. thank you for the suggestion. I will try instant os.
It's not worth it. Ram is dirt cheap, you can get 8gb for like $30. For $150-$200, you can find an used Thinkpad that will perform 1000x better.
I would only use such a machine for playing with old software like Windows 2000 or XP, old Linux distros.
DietPi is always a good option. It's designed for raspberry pi, but you can absolutely run it on a laptop and install your desktop environment (XFCE etc)
You know those Acer mini laptops from around 2010 back when tablets weren't really a thing?
Linux Mint runs on those bad boys.
I've heard Debian and Alpine are good lightweight distros
I think most distros will run fine on most hardware though (please correct me if I'm wrong) it's the software you run on it (as in, going with a GNOME desktop environment is going to be much more demanding than xfce for example)
Surprised Void Linux has not been recommended. I suggest giving it a try.
