Here’s the PC:
Depends on what you’re looking for. I’m guessing you’re more of neophyte to Linux or you probably wouldn’t be asking.
I always recommend Linux Mint to newbies. It’s very user friendly (more so than windows 11 imo), and it’s a spin off of Ubuntu, so it’s got great support behind it.
Ubuntu itself is a spin off of a distro called Debian, so if you ever have problems with Linux Mint and you can’t find an answer on the very helpful Linux Mint forums, you could always search for your answer on Ubuntu’s forums, or Debian’s.
Arch based distros are better for newer hardware because it’s bleeding edge, but that laptop looks so old that you probably wouldn’t need anything like that.
Second linux mint for starters.
When do you guys outgrow mint?
I like fedora’s defaults (which are very different to ubuntu/mints) and I’d still recommend it to a seasoned linux user. (I use opensuse aeon btw, but I wouldn’t recommend it to starters)
Why is mint only for starters? When do you reach the point where you outgrow it?
It’s not just for starters. Lots of veterans use it too.
Nobody wrote just or only for starters. It is just darn easy for beginners and somewhat familiar for people switching.
You basically never outgrow it, and naturally you can always head over to experiment with other distros (e.g. CachyOS).
You are confused. Try again.
Try again and read the post you were answering too in the first place.
By luck you’ll find the only, which wasn’t mentioned by the originating post (original_charles) or my plus one post, but was introduced by the illusionist.
Okay let me try again:
Why is mint only for starters?
It’s not just for starters.
Nobody wrote just or only for starters
Nice Thinkpad! I recently installed Linux Mint Debian Edition on one of the more recent Thinkpads. But the other suggestions here are fine as well. Mind an older Laptop with a spinning harddisk inside might not be as snappy as a people expect these days.
I use CachyOS on my X220 with btrfs and lzo as disk compression (lzo is very good on old cpus and makes the SSD go really fast). But I think any distro could be good on that hardware.
As a side note, I would really like an x86_64-v2 distro, people jumped from no additional instructions to v3 in no time, but these thinkpads and older pcs could really shine with that kind of optimization.
What is the usecase?
If this is a primary driver for things like work or your primary personal email/web/productivity machine, IMO you want Fedora for stability
If this will be for games, there are good dedicated distros (consider Batocera if you love retro!)
I run Debian. It’s perfect
I like Mint but really most major distros are fine these days.
Please stop asking, everyone. The answer is always Mint.
Mint rather than Ubuntu surely, if you want a debian base. If you prefer something Fedora-based, I hear good things about Bazzite
If you don’t upgrade the RAM, go with Linux Mint with the MATE desktop. If you do upgrade to 8GB RAM, probably LMDE? You don’t need to be on a bleeding edge kernel with a Windows 8 era laptop, modern optimizations will not affect perf much.
If you’re using this laptop to do work, then Mint or Zorin can’t be beat. They have user-friendly interfaces, they have stable packages meaning updates are unlikely to break your OS, and you can still install new software through Flatpak and Snap.
Once installed, install Librewolf for web browsing, VLC for video playback, OnlyOffice for MS Office files, and any other software you need from the built-in software store. If you choose Mint then you need to turn on unverified Flatpaks in the software store for everything to appear.
Also, with the original 1 x 4 GB of RAM and mechanical hard drive, this laptop will be slow with a modern OS, so I recommend upgrading it to 8 GB RAM (2 x 4 GB is recommended for dual channel speed) and an SSD beforehand.
First thing you need to do is buy a bunch of thigh-high socks, then try those on and feel which one feels right for you. Then post your legs with those on and we will tell you in the comments which distro to run.
Spoiler: It’s Arch btw
Hannah Montana Linux, obviously
I swear by mulinux with Emacs as textual WM.
