>The honest assessment: If the machine cannot run a lightweight Linux desktop at a usable speed after you have applied the optimizations in this guide, it is time to recycle it responsibly. Most municipalities have e-waste collection programs. Do not throw it in the trash. The components contain recyclable metals and toxic materials that need proper handling.

This is the whole point.Linux helps in that judgement whether to keep or throw the box.

And you can go even smaller with TinyCore Linux [0] or the xwoaf-rebuild [1]

0, http://www.tinycorelinux.net/

1, https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk...

Honestly it comes down to what do you mean by using Linux. In 2026, or well at least since the mid 2010s, the biggest hurdle will be the web browser. Do you need that? If yes then you are already in the higher system requirement pool. If not then pretty much anything goes, like the options I mentioned above. And even then you can use curl, wget, aria2 etc to access online content to some extent

OS/2 might also be an option on some of this older hardware.

I use Pop_OS! on my old 2014 Macbook Pro (16 GB LPDDR3, i5-4278U with 4 cores). It runs superbly with Gnome3. Given that it is 12 years old now and the latest supported macOS version with opencore legacy patcher was stuttering and unusably slow, there is a second life now for the machine. I mostly use it as a headless home server, the built in battery serves as UPS, keyboard and trackpad make it easier to setup and debug things.

I changed the battery myself (50€ replacement from Amazon) and it looks as good as new (one benefit of the aluminum chassis and glass display is that they can be cleaned quite well). Hardware support from Linux for those intel machines is great nowadays: WiFi, Bluetooth, trackpad etc all work.

For "older but not truly retro" devices, I personally recommend linux mint. I have a fx6100 running it.

Please consider if you really need zram when zswap is an alternative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47500746