Linux

My friend always recommended puppy linux fur such devices, he was very happy with it

I personally think alpine might be a good fit, it is very lightweight. It does not use systemd though and is therefore in many ways different than most distros(for some this is a good thing). I know it from postmarketOS (optimised for phone hardware)

Other than that, you may just take Arch, as it comes pretty minimal and you can choose for every package to use the most lightweight solution

Or you can go even more personalised with gentoo, linuxFroScratch or yocto. Just requires some skill, but skill can always be acquired by learning and doing.

Why wouldn't Debian run?

Debian is the OS, with its package manager and some applications suggested by default. You can install Debian with X, without X, with a certain window manager or another, etc. So... Debian WILL 100% run, the question rather is WHICH software should you pick that gives the best compromise between ease of use (specific to that person) AND performance (specific to that computer).

PS: to be clear, that's the same for other distributions. There are distributions that specifically target older hardware and that in turn might facilitate the process but usually if you do check how such distributions are done, they are basically Debian (or NixOS or Alpine or whatever) with a specific package selection. It's rare (if ever? counter-example) to have anything special that would somehow "boost" performance for hardware, especially here when it's rather common hardware.

AntiX.

This is good RAM for any 32 bit OS which is still being maintained.
64 bit OS require minimum 4 GB.

I don't think Google will like any 32 bit device though. Go for an older version from libreoffice.

Run a 32 bit distro. It is the only thing that will run well on 2 GB of RAM. It will run better than you think.

Q4OS, Antix, MX Linux, Damn Small Linux, and even pure 32 bit Debian are decent candidates. If you use Q4, give the Trinity desktop a shot.

I like Andelie Linux as well but MUSL may cause problems for an unsophisticated user.

I put Antix on a 2Gb 64bit HP Atom. Worked well for notes and browsing. Oddly an SSD seemed to make little difference to performance compared to the previous HDD. Old architecture I guess.

To be honest, I wouldn't on a 2Gb laptop. It'll run Linux just fine but the minute you use a browser or office suite you'll have memory problems.

I was always a fan of crunchbang when I used a couple of eee pcs as servers. It ran very light.

As another said on the thread — it’s not really Linux that is the issue here as much as the internet. Browsers are just memory hogs now and you’re not going to get an enjoyable experience on 2gb of ram imo, if the goal is to have a functional laptop. OTOH, it would be a great little project server to play around with things like pihole or your Arrs🏴‍☠️ or other self hosting goodness.

Probably Fedora.

The most important thing is not the distribution, but to enable ZRAM (or ZSWAP) and use a lightweight desktop. I am not sure how much difference a 32bit vs a 64bit distribution makes, but if possible you could take one for the team and run some trials and report your numbers (RAM usage) back here.

Of course I recommend Debian with a lightweight desktop of your choice, or Alpine.

Last time i searched for "lightweight" linux distros (for an old Thnkpad) the ones i saw recommended the most were: TinyCore, Puppy, Porteus, Absolute, antiX, Q4OS, Slax,, Sparky, MX.
I saw Bohdi and other Ubuntu-based distros suggested quite a lot as well but my definition of lightweight means under 1GiB usage.
For a DE go with XFCE or some other lightweight DE.

Mx linux with fluxbox

Your biggest problem is the amount of RAM, not the cpu. Some Linux distros would fit nicely on 2gb with a few native apps open, but the moment you'd want to browse the web, all hell will break loose, as each tab will take hundreds of megs each (youtube takes between 600 and 1200 mb of ram). FYI, even if chrome/ium is hated in these parts, it uses less ram than firefox (there's also a setting to use even less ram).

I'd suggest you use either Alpine Linux with xfce (240 MB of RAM on a cold boot), or even better, Q4OS with the Trinity Desktop (fork of KDE), 350 MB of RAM. The advantage of Q4OS is that it's a debian, so it can run lots of .deb files made for debian. Alpine is cool and all, but it has bugs on the desktop (some of its package management has dependency problems).

A tip: to save ram, don't use background images, only a single color. You can save up to 50 MB of RAM that way, depending on the image you'd be using.

puppy linux. ironically its made to run completely in memory but only needs like 500meg

Puppy Linux is what I usually see recommended for such low specs. It's also available with a Debian base.

https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/

Puppy would fly on there, or even DSL 2024. Heck, both those distros would fly even on a Pentium 4 of all things.

I think antiX would be a nice option. I installed it on a 20 years old laptop and it runs quite fast.

Debian, lxqt and x11.

If you can get an ssd in there then there’s some zram or something or other that can make it even better.

Puppy or Debian with openbox or another light wm , is crunchbang still a thing ?.

for linux and the most basic of basic tasks, i'd look at peppermint. it's what i put on all the old crap here with 'marginal' specs that choke on windows. debian stable xfce based. base install is pretty sparse, not even a browser is included initially. a utility pops up after first boot to facilitate installing a browser, media player, and a few other things if you want them, or the entire debian stable repository is also available. one thing of note. with only 2gb ram, it's gonna be tight, whatever he runs on it.

his use case is screaming for a cheap chromebook, though. so at least consider that instead. an old laptop like that might make someone a nice little pihole or something, if it's not ready to be put down for good.

Windows 10 has a bug with 100% disk utilization that goes away if you have an ssd. You should look into upgrading the ram to 4 or 8 gb. ddr3 ram is dirt cheap on ebay. It would probably cost $10-$15 for 8gb and another $10 for a 120gb ssd.

Debian is on the right track. XFCE might work - I remember it running pretty well on a laptop with 4 gigs.

Mint.

It's extremely stable Linux for your grandma, that comes with every tool that she will ever use and on the cinnamon interface all those tools are exactly where she will expect them to be if she is used to using Windows.

I've gotten three boomers to use it and they hardly ever ask for tech support because it's so stable.

honestly the distro doesn't matter so much as long as the hardware i supported. run a minimal desktop, disable CPU hogs and file indexing etc.

I used fvwm on Debian for many years on old computers. worked great. now I have kde/plasma on arch. my 10 year old laptop handles it fine...

Upgrade that box or repurpose it for something else. Web bloat has made 2gb machines useless for browsing and 4gb marginal, if the user needs Google docs, put in 8gb or more.