I have an old Everex Zonbu Notebook from years ago (2007-2008). It has no options to boot from USB or CD. So I place the hard drive in my current laptop and formatted it but am now unsure what to put on it. Here are the original specs:

Processor Name: VIA C7-M
Processor Speed: 1.5 GHz
Operating System: Gentoo Linux
RAM: 512 MB
Graphics Card: VIA Chrome9 HC IGP
Storage Capacity: 60 GB
Graphics Memory: 128 GB

Are there any compatible distros that I can install on there or am I better off just putting a distro on the drive to use with my current laptop? (2013 Toshiba Satellite)

antix would run on that. And offers pretty good setup for low spec machines. I'm fairly certain though that the Graphics Memory is 128 MB, not GB?

Thanks! I'll try that one out and see how it goes. And you're correct lol, I copied the specs from PC Mag not thinking I had to double check.

I'll second that antiX recommendation. Definitely a great choice for low spec machines. The community over at their official forums is really helpful.

If you find that antiX takes up too much RAM, you could try a minimal Debian install instead. I have next to me a Debian 9 machine with 512MB of RAM and Atom N450 CPU (similar specs to your machine). It idles at 80MB of RAM consumption, with XFCE4 GUI and ssh running.

Basically, you just:

1) Do a minimal install of Debian

2) Log in as root and install the GUI with:

This will install the XFCE4 desktop environment, along with sound, and the lightdm graphical login manager (you can shave off a little more RAM consumption by skipping lightdm, but then you'll have to log in at the text console and use the "startx" command to get into the GUI).

With only 512MB of RAM, minimizing RAM consumption can really help.

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I have an OLD Dell Inspiron 1100 Laptop. It is very close to your specs. I just installed Slitaz on it and it works very well. Also, Tiny Core is a good one to put on very OLD machines. I do no know a thing about Antix. Antix may be the way to go. I just wanted to add these other two in case you needed something for backup.

Good Luck!

AntiX is the best choice: it's just a careful selection of Debian software specifically chosen for small computers. I've seen it running a web-browser and using 120MB! That's quite a nice little computer, similar in performance to my old Thinkpad, and well worth preserving.

Puppy Linux is very good for computers like that. Also check out Slitaz, it's very small.

I run MX-16 686 on an old IBM laptop. Debian Jessie is pretty current

Puppy Linux flavor called LXpup is full featured, lots of custom apps.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lxpup/

antiX is run by a hard marxist, so be warned

Really!? I've been using it for many years & that's the first time I've ever heard that!
Anyway, what one believes in makes no difference to how an operating system works!
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AntiX comes in 3 flavours, one will likely suit you.

If you would like to try a Devuan based system, check out Vuu-Do Linux or MIYO Linux.

It is how people are treated & supported or not supported,
ethical conduct of distro maintainers matters to me.