Looking for DE that works i386 32bit pcs

[kovacslt (László Kovács)]

Hi!
I’m not sure if this combo will work for you, but I’d definitely try Debian 8 +LXDE with the non-PAE kernel. That worked me the best among distros I tried on an ancient old laptop with 512MB RAM.

Revitalizing a really(!) ancient machine

I helped a friend here to get started on the way towards Linux, and his old, but still usable Laptop got a 32 bit Linux Mint 19.3 XFCE. He was amazed how well this system performed on his old laptop. He gave me his very first ancient laptop just to see if I can put Linux onto it too? It’s a HP pavilion ze4200, AMD Athlon XP2200+ (mobile) and having 512MB RAM. Originally Windows XP was installed, booting in several minutes, I’d say it was unbearable… This laptop has no real use today, so there…

The whole thing booted around 30 seconds, and ran acceptable overall, except browsing.
Browsing the current WEB is simply unbearable on such an old computer…