New Life on Old ThinkPad T41

Found my old IBM ThinkPad T41 in a cupboard. Wanted to see if I get it back to working condition.

Installed Windows XP on it, but couldn't get WiFi to work. I mean WiFi work, I can see the WiFi LED on. I can see the WiFi icon in the notification area. However, it's not able to see any WiFi access points.

Clean installed Windows 7 to see if it's any better. Wireless not even detected. Have to get the install the driver packs from my Windows XP disc to get that working. Ended up with a similar situation. However, after resetting the wireless interface, Windows was able to detect wireless networks, and go from there. The next issue I'm experiencing is that the laptop runs too slow on Windows 7. Opening a simple webpage takes ages (relatively speaking). And after installing Windows Defender, it became even slower (if that's even possible). CPU is almost always at a 100% and the hard disk is always active. Hard to believe this is the same corporate laptop running Windows and Office and Wireshark (Ethereal) back in the day!

Tried to load CloudReady via USB, but it won't boot up properly. Looks like Linux is my only option. My first choice would've been Linux Mint, but I reckon it's still too "modern" for the T41. We need something that is built/designed for old, slow 32-bit PCs from the ground up.

• Damn Small Linux seems to be dead.
• Read somewhere that lubuntu doesn't have the WiFi drivers out of the box.
• Tried Puppy Linux, but the BionicPup variant I downloaded won't install because it comes with a PAE kernel, and the CPU on the T41 doesn't have PAE capability.
• Finally settled on antiX. Based on Debian, but totally free of systemd. Now that's a feature.

Booted up antiX from USB stick just fine. Installed it on the hard disk with no issues. Got the WiFi working using ceni. Memory usage is really low, and CPU is pretty much idle if you're not doing anything. Firefox takes up a few hundred MBs of memory. Web browsing is slow, but works. Watching videos over the network or YouTube pretty much maxes out the CPU. Looks like this is only going to be useful as a text editor.