Fate has delivered me a question that is MEANT for the Fediverse:

I have been asked to "wipe" a bunch of old laptops destined for e-waste. Is Mint the best distro to put on these if I want to distribute them to Linux-curious family members?

@eamon I just installed this https://maboxlinux.org on a MacBook 5,1 2008.
MaboxLinux | fast, lightweight and functional Linux Desktop

Download Mabox uses Openbox WM and lightweight apps, which makes it minimal and fast. It only takes ~300Mb of memory. Mabox is built on top of Manjaro stable branch, powered by LTS kernel…

MaboxLinux