[anthk]

Slackware or NetBSD would run perfectly.

For Slackware, enable ZRAM:

     wget -O /etc/rc.d/rc.zram https://raw.githubusercontent.com/otzy007/enable-zRam-in-Slackware/master/etc/rc.d/rc.zram

     sed -i 's,1024,512,g' /etc/rc.d/rc.zram

     chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.zram

     echo '/etc/rc.d/rc.zram start' >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Easy GUI on Slackware:

You won't need Plasma or XFCE. For sure. Deselect them, as lightweight apps are more than enough. Setup Slackbuild thru sbotools. Then, sboinstall icewm and configure it:

- IceWM. Edit the preferences so the fonts match the GTK3 theme. "fc-list | grep fontname" will help you on that.

- Some matching IceWM and GTK3/2 theme. Metal2 from IceWM matches perfectly the Solaris 8 theme from B00merang, Google/DDG it.

- XFE as the file manager, the colour scheme can be changed with ease so it matches the GTK3 colours.

- "udiskie &" in ~/.icewm/startup.

- "nm-applet &" appended to the same file.

- Seamonkey as the web browser, with UBo Legacy.

- AlienBOB has a Chromium build, and I have a huge envvar for Chromium in order to be run fast on machines with at least 1GB of RAM. It's too large in order to be posted here, but I can post it under a separate self-answer to this post.

- Audacious as the audio player, SMplayer for videos.

- For gaming, Slackware has several Slackbuilds with light games. And Wine with multilib.

- Ted/Gnumeric make an amazing and lightweight alternative to LibreOffice.

[fogihujy]

+1 for IceWM. It's ridiculously fast and lightweight while retaining a bare minimum of what it needs to be usable. I rarely touch computers as old as the one in the original blog post, but a simple Debian/IceWM setup will fly on things like netbooks with 1 GB RAM.

I suggest MOC as an alternative music player and mpv for videos.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Can't get used to IceWM on multi-screen setups. Fluxbox works better with those(for me), especially different screen sizes and resolutions. Regarding media players, why use anything else besides mpv at all? Doesn't matter if started manually with some playlist, or out of some filemanager, regardless if from (framebuffer)console, some X-terminal emulator, or X itself. Works, anytime, for anything.

[fogihujy]

I didn't consider multi-screen setups for such old things as net books. But yes, Fluxbox is also very nice for older systems.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Why not? They have at least one external VGA, which you can use to drive at least some 14 to 17" external panel at stunning 1024x768 to 1280x1024!1!!

Or not so old ones with HDMI/DP easily anything 22 to 24" @1920x1200, as I do.

edit: more screen real estate is always good!