I installed Linux on a 10+ year old laptop. (It was forced to stay on Windows 10 otherwise)
This is the laptop that my family will be using for viewing and sorting photos albums, and having Linux is just really nice for privacy! (And also easy to justify to them because of Windows’ EOL)
Because the laptop is old I went with Debian, as all of the software is well-tested, and non-security updates are only every 2 years. This way I lower the chance of hardware failure, while keeping things low-maintenance.
As for the desktop environment, I chose LXDE. It’s an amazing power-efficient desktop, while still being very customisable. It’s a pain for high PPI (Pixels Per Inch) screens, but luckily the laptop is only 1280x720, and seems to have an ideal PPI for LXDE.
Debian LXDE (and more) download page:
Although the ISO’s say amd64, it’s for Intel as well. They just call them amd64 as a naming convention, as shown here.