you know even the slightest thing about hardware???

Don't be snotty. Perhaps it's you who doesn't know? Read on. I've gone the distance in refurbishing old laptops. This project is likely to be $100, maybe less depending on what we find. If you can't spend anything, whew, going to be hell.

I've put a SATA drive in a 486SX from 1999. Adapters exist. No, you won't get top speed, but it beats hell out of an HDD.

Update the BIOS first! That can make or break upgrades. Never had an ASUS, worked on plenty, they seem pretty solid on that count.

Look up "max RAM" for that exact model. That can be a real limitation, but I'd bet you could cram at least 4GB, if not 8GB. And remember, manufacturer specs can often be exceeded. Check ASUS, then see what people have said in forums. I've doubled what the maker says is possible many, many times.

Can't speak to a distro, but you need to get an SSD in there and boost the RAM before even bothering.

BTW, any chance that CPU is socketed, removable? I've had great success replacing CPUs in old laptops. Upgrades can be hilariously cheap on eBay. Cheap as in, $10 for a far better chip. Send me the exact model and we'll look.

While we're at it, a new battery is probably cheap, like $20. But that goes in last.

sata is not supported. let alone ssds. do you know even the slightest thing about hardware???

It's just a guess, you never did tell us what specific model Asus you have there.

Not that you're curious but the model I have here is a Asus F8S which seems to be closer to 2008 era e.g. https://www.newegg.com/black-asus-f8-series-f8sn-d1/p/N82E16834220331?srsltid=AfmBOorI8VyoX35T6xRUD0e-Mbg1Q6IFui9Xgy6RlsB2sLLhfuFvIePr

In 2008 laptops did have SATA connections. I have in fact plugged in SATA SSDs into old laptops and desktops from that era and earlier. I doubt 3 years is too much difference but again, no idea on the specific hardware you're looking at so maybe your specific laptop is one of the last generation that was ATA only, not SATA (?)

Also, 4gb ram back then was a lot, like 64 gb today

Yes granted 3 years earlier 4GB would have cost more for sure. 1GB RAM is the bare minimum for Windows 7 Home 32-bit so I guess this thing you have was already at the bare minimum.

The rest of my comment still stands, it will work perfectly fine as a Linux server with CLI only though that's not quite the answer you want.

1.73 ghz Intel Celeron M

EDIT: The CPU you've got is 64-bit capable I believe https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/29733/intel-celeron-m-processor-530-1m-cache-1-73-ghz-533-mhz-fsb-socket-m/specifications.html

So the laptop should have been spec'd for 2GB RAM minimum normally. Thinking you're not reading the full RAM correctly e.g. if in Windows maybe run CPU-Z or similar to actually see what the full RAM and individual RAM sticks claim to have.

SATA started rolling out in drive around 2003/2004, it's possible. My 08 laptop had a Sata ssd.

Just throw Arch/ Alpine on it with sway. If you need a full DE, LXQT is pretty light weight but even plasma is not too expensive tbh.

my goal is not a daily driver with this, but only something nostalgic and the idea to run a computer until it really dies and becomes totally unusable

Aight, as long as you're moderating your expectations and interested in it from that aspect. Just don't want you to spend a lot of time on it and to be disappointed -- like, no matter what the OS does, some modern graphical applications are going to have heavy RAM usage relative to what's in that machine.

anything craigslist is out of the picture, i’m european

Sure, but I can't believe that the global market for used computers is wildly different. If it were, someone would just get into the business of bulk-moving them across international lines, arbitraging them. I'm sure that Europe has analogous services.

kagis

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/15tqw98/what_is_your_countrys_equivalent_of_craigslist/

There are some there.

Are those any good?

I mean, it's all relative. There are certainly people who like them enough to use them.

Fluxbox (and blackbox, and openbox) looked kind of similar the last time I was comparing them, which was a long time ago. They look and work more like a conventional Windows windowing environment. They're older and fairly lightweight.

I've used i3 myself for some time (and use sway now, which is an i3-alike for Wayland), so I don't have any criticisms of it, but it may or may not be what you want, if you're not familiar with a tiling windowing environment. It probably wouldn't be the first thing I'd recommend to someone getting their feet wet with Linux off Windows, as it's one more thing to become familiar with, and you're probably going to be doing a fair bit of that already.

I don't recall using jwm, and the last time I used icewm was so long ago that I can't recall anything about it.

Arch?