Nothing i do today on computers is fundamentally different than it was 10 or 15 years ago, except that now I need at least twice the processor time to do it (and often 3-5 times more)

@wyatt Do you have anything nice to say about the "low-spec Linux distro for GUI people"-scene, or do you suggest that everyone just picks up a more generalist distro/OS and learns to configure away the bloated bits?

Have personally had a lot of success with MX Linux: even if it's just Debian with a suite of GUI tools (i.e theming, package management, making LiveUSBs of the running system, installing proprietary Nvidia drivers when Noveau doesn't cut it), official support for sysvinit and occasional warts that don't show up in the source material (i.e lock screen not working out of the box in the XFCE ISO).

Puppy Linux and Tiny Core have some interesting-sounding features, but dual-core Ivy Bridge laptops aren't crappy enough to justify running everything as root or using an obscure esoteric package manager (respectively).
If I'm gonna step that far out of my comfort zone I'd rather go all-out and try NetBSD.