First thing you need to do is buy a bunch of thigh-high socks, then try those on and feel which one feels right for you. Then post your legs with those on and we will tell you in the comments which distro to run.

Spoiler: It’s Arch btw

Unrelated but relevant advice: Is this a refurbished laptop?

1. Make sure to run Lenovo Diagnostics software; you can get it from official Lenovo website and check for any hardware issues during the stress testing.
2. Check if BIOS password is removed.
3. Test for memory RAM errors: disable secure boot in BIOS, then run Memtest86 test via a bootable USB to check for any memory errors.

I reccomend fedora, great compromise between stability and modern features

Debian with XFCE. It’s very stable with very little bloat compared to Ubuntu.

KDE might not run horribly, but XFCE was always snappy for me when I ran it on a similarly-aged, sinmilar performance Fujitsu Lifebook.

I’ve been using Debian. I’ve never understood the attraction of Ubuntu, which is basically a corporate relabel of Debian. If I were really cool, I’d presumably go for Nix or Guix. Maybe someday. I switched from Fedora to Debian some years ago over some drama whose details I’ve forgotten, and have been happy with the move. Arch tries to be more up to date with everything and I guess that’s good for some users, but I like stuff that is stable, with an upgrade every few years.

Please stop asking, everyone. The answer is always Mint.

With a machine like that, you’re firmly in the mainstream of linux. Almost any distro will run well on it, so selection is a matter of taste.

Debian is a solid, conservative option, though they have a reputation of lagging behind other distros in terms of software versions. I do like arch, their wiki is first rate. It has the reputation of being finicky but I’ve always found it pretty straightforward. Great for the extensive docs and not trying to insulate you from the system.

I personally would avoid ubuntu these days, they seem to be leaning into the Ubuntu Way for things like installing software. A bit lock-in ish for me.

FWIW I’m running nixos on my thinkpads, works great. Nixos is not to be undertaken lightly, there’s a lot to learn and docs are meh. Stability is second to none, and the declarative configuration management makes it great for easing into devops.

I run Debian. It’s perfect

For a PC from around 2010-2018: Mint Cinnamon, Ubuntu 24.04, Lubuntu 24.04, MX Linux, in that order. Not Kubuntu, apparently it’s the lost sheep of the family. Until you’ve used Linux for a few years, always aim for LTS (long term support) or similar terms. Never use an OS billed as a “beta” or “release candidate”. “Rolling release” is suspect. It’s all fun and games until your OS doesn’t boot or you lose your data. Stability matters (and back up your data). Once you learn how Linux works, and if you become an enthusiast, you can do what you want. I highly, highly doubt you’ll find Arch as painless as what I recommend.

https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/58612395

400+ installs in the past four years - discarded/donated business laptops that get fixed, cleaned, upgraded with cheapest SSDs and donated to predominantly tech illiterate users.

99% is ubuntu lts + ansible playbook that removes snap, disables A TON of update naggings, installs flatpak, coupla apps and systemd timer to autoupdate all flatpaks. this is the only thing that has low support requests, everything else we tried (mint, debian, fedora) has a disproportionately higher support request frequency (reinstalls, wifi, fix this, remove that, etc).

I’d say Ubuntu as #1 but it’s not known for maximum performance. Debian installer is a total mess and Linux fans don’t realize how foreign it is to a newbie. It feels like the Debian installer was last updated in 2004. I have a soft spot for Lubuntu and its classic Windows 2000 look. Runs fast too if that matters to you.

Mint rather than Ubuntu surely, if you want a debian base. If you prefer something Fedora-based, I hear good things about Bazzite

I use CachyOS on my X220 with btrfs and lzo as disk compression (lzo is very good on old cpus and makes the SSD go really fast). But I think any distro could be good on that hardware.

As a side note, I would really like an x86_64-v2 distro, people jumped from no additional instructions to v3 in no time, but these thinkpads and older pcs could really shine with that kind of optimization.

What is the usecase?

If this is a primary driver for things like work or your primary personal email/web/productivity machine, IMO you want Fedora for stability

If this will be for games, there are good dedicated distros (consider Batocera if you love retro!)

I’ve got Debian with XFCE on the X220 I’m using as a server. No fuss, it just gets on with its job.

There’s no real difference between different brands of laptops that matters to distributions. In most cases there’s not even a difference between desktops and laptops that matters to distribution choice.

ThinkPads have always been well supported by Linux and older laptops are even better for support as there’s no issue of hardware newer than drivers.

Man, Arch is so easy to install these days with archinstall, there’s no reason not to give Arch a shot first!

(I use Arch btw)