Nonya BidnissMar 5
I've been physically destroying several old hard drives and prepping a pile of old electronics for recycling. The HDD in this old acer palmtop was too hard to get out. I couldn't even figure it out. So I found this very old software to supposedly wipe it. It's fine, I only ever used this thing to tinker with Arduino anyway.
Show threadNonya BidnissMar 5
It has (had) Win XP on it 😆
Note the tiny piece of sticky note covering up the camera, yeah I do that. Too many years in the IC
Show threadNonya BidnissMar 7
Follow-up: Now that I've wiped this palmtop I'm tempted to try putting #Linux on it. Anybody know what might work well on it? It's over 10 years old and by today's standards pretty limited. Acer Aspire One ZG5, specs: Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD. I would want a user friendly OS that doesn't need me to do much command line if at all.
Show threadDave Wilburn 

@Nonya_Bidniss

It might feel a little sluggish with just 1GB RAM, but my first instinct would probably be Ubuntu.

Mar 7 at 12:19amWeb
Show threadNonya BidnissMar 7
@DaveMWilburn It looks like Ubuntu MATE might work with this hardware. The requirements for other versions are beyond this computer. Can't lose anything trying it from a USB drive at least.
Show threadDave Wilburn Mar 7

@Nonya_Bidniss

If that fails, there's always Puppy Linux.

You could also probably do something with TinyCore but it would probably require a lot of fiddling to get a GUI and apps loaded.

Show threadNonya BidnissMar 7
@DaveMWilburn Thank you, it looks like Puppy Linux requirements are well within what this computer has. Best one yet that I've looked at.
Show threadNonya BidnissMar 7
@DaveMWilburn Well I'm seeing a lot of "do not use Puppy if you are a beginner" and I saw a Reddit comment from someone with the same hardware specs as mine who said Mint ran fine so I may try that.
Show threadDave Wilburn Mar 7

@Nonya_Bidniss

A more mainstream distro like Mint would almost certainly be a better user experience if it'll run.

Show threadCorey Snipes 🌱Mar 7
@Nonya_Bidniss You have some good suggestions here already. Based on your constraints I'd probably try Linux Mint with MATE or XFCE (both combos are available as pre-packaged ISOs).
Show threadNonya BidnissMar 7

@coreysnipes That failed. I didn't realize it wouldn't support 32-bit.

I'll probably try a 32-bit antiX.

Show threadCorey Snipes 🌱Mar 7
@Nonya_Bidniss Ah, too bad. I was able to install Mint on a 32-bit Thinkpad X1 but it's been a while since I tried that.