I enjoy collecting old ThinkPads and other Notebooks, and I wanted to clarify a few points about 32-bit vs. 64-bit support.

The last true 32-bit processors were the AMD Athlon XP and Intel Pentium 4 (early Core Duo models also had 32-bit variants). ThinkPad series like the T6x, T4x, R5x, and X3x/X4x are limited to 32-bit. Meanwhile, models like the X2xx and newer generally support 64-bit and run modern distros like Debian or Fedora smoothly, often this models have at least 2GB of RAM and 64GB+ storage.

The article's title feels a bit misleading to me. It's more about limited resources (RAM/storage) than truly "old" hardware. In my view, the defining factor for "old" should be 32-bit processor support, which is far more restrictive than storage or RAM constraints. Usually the 32-bit systems are better typewriter. They don't have enough power the browse smoothly the modern web.

For 32-bit systems, I usually go with Q4OS (great for old hardware compatibility) or Puppy Linux (unlimited 32-bit support). For 64-bit, it's Fedora (Sway) or Debian (GNOME). I choose these distros because I want to get the manual installation and setup done in under an hour. Worth noting: many distros still support 32-bit, but some (like Debian) are phasing it out by 2028.