CraigH730,

Your old laptop is very low powered and needs something like antiX-16.1 which is based on Debian:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Download the 32 bit antiX-16.1_386-full.iso:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?tit...Page#Downloads

antiX-16 FAQs:
http://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/...FAQ/index.html

Forums:
http://antix.freeforums.org/index.php

To enable wifi after installation:

Menu > Control Centre > Network > Network Interfaces (ceni) > wlan0 > follow wizard and give SSID/network name and wifi password.

Puppy Linux is another alternative for old hardware:
http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%...%20Started.htm

NB You don't have to actually install Puppy (to hard disk) to use it.

Simply burn the ISO to CD/DVD and boot the PC or laptop with it.

Arch linux is another alternative for low powered systems. I use Arch linux with Openbox. Takes up about 120M of ram, 2G HDD space,.. running on an old Compaq laptop with a Celeron/1G ram from 2000 era.

https://www.archlinux.org/

I agree that Mint might be a bit much for that laptop. AntiX, MX, or Salix would be fine: I was using my Pentium III laptop with Salix only the other day.

Since the OP is a Linux beginner, I would definitely NOT recommend Arch. I've tried installing that twice, and succeeded once — and that took several hours.

PS It's just been reported that Arch is dropping 32-bit support.

Hey Craig - I played around alot with Linux on old hardware - another vote from me to stay away from Ubuntu, Mint or anything big and bloated.

I've had success with various flavours of Puppy in the past (the 2.14X "Classic Pup" line is particularly forgiving of old hardware ...) ;

... and Arch. With Arch, you may have to use an older ISO and be careful not to update your system indiscriminately - Arch as a rolling release will bring you right up to date with today's versions of all your packages, kernel and all ... David McCann's above comment concerning Arch is valid, however: it's not the type of distro that is easy on beginners - you must spend a lot of time reading up on things and you end up with a command line installation to build upon. Those are the reasons it is my preferred distro, although I admit it was not my first. I went through Ubuntu and Puppy before settling down with Arch ... ;-)

Although I have no experience with it myself, many others here recommend antiX for old hardware.

Have fun :-)