32 bit aren't a problem, RAM however could be. I've run Debian on 32 bit Atom netbooks with 1 Gig RAM without problems. Using light desktop environments such as XFCE or smaller ones would allow also 512MB RAM or even less.
Years ago I successfully run Debian + LXDE desktop on one of those toy Win-CE Chinese laptops with just 128MB RAM. CPU was a WM8505 clocked at a whopping 300MHz. And then there's ELKS Linux which would work on 8086 CPUs too which I successfully run on a industrial PC many moons ago. https://github.com/jbruchon/elks
Extremely small systems aside, it can run fine on decently equipped laptops or netbooks. Surfing the web with a full featured browser such as Firefox or using heavy apps such as LibreOffice without having the system swap too much would likely require no less than 2 Gigs or more, but if you do network maintenance using command line tools, even the smallest netbook with half a Gig RAM becomes an useful tool to keep in the bag along with bigger laptops.
Which CPU model do you have exactly? If it's a core 2 model, they are actually 64bit capable (32bit extended) and can run an x86_64 linux without issues.
Rather than that I'd recommend Debian or Mint with MATE if you want an easy and stable distro. Otherwise if you are willing enough, go for archlinux32 to have still the benefits of AUR.
> I recently inherited a 32-bit laptop that runs Vista, any recommendations of what version of Linux to try?
I'll have to check to be sure that it is 32bit(l/top is downstairs and I'm lazy), but I do my personal projects on a 2008 Asus that came with Vista and 2GB of RAM. I literally use it daily using:
1. Emacs
2. Vim + every plugin you can think of for development
3. GCC + all the devtools for C development
4. Standard gui tools (browser, some solitaire games, dia for diagrams, etc).
Extremely small systems aside, it can run fine on decently equipped laptops or netbooks. Surfing the web with a full featured browser such as Firefox or using heavy apps such as LibreOffice without having the system swap too much would likely require no less than 2 Gigs or more, but if you do network maintenance using command line tools, even the smallest netbook with half a Gig RAM becomes an useful tool to keep in the bag along with bigger laptops.