SSD: Best Buy (US electronics store) still had some SATA SSDs in stock, so I didn’t need an adapter. This is what I got: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-cs900-500gb-internal-ssd-sata/6385542.p?skuId=6385542

Take advantage of the fact that you can make Live USBs of the distros as you decide what you’re looking for.

For me, I found AntiX a little too barebones for me. But your mileage will vary.

I will have to give Mint another go sometime!

Ooh, I just did this! Mid 2010 white MacBook, Core 2 Duo P8600, 2GB, spinning rust HDD.

*Strongly recommend switching to SSD. I also added an 8GB stick (so 9GB total, hah) but my hunch is that even the SSD alone would have made this machine much more enjoyable.

I ultimately decided on MX Linux, although with systemd as init so that logind could handle lid and power button events. The default power manager (XFCE?) would result in a black screen upon resuming otherwise. MX Linux also worked the best for me in terms of optimizing for battery life.

PeppermintOS was my second place but also had the black-screen on resume.

I also tried various flavors of Mint but felt that Peppermint and MX were ever-so-slightly leaner in terms of features I actually use and battery life.

Avoid Void Linux. On my system the trackpad only worked in one direction.

I was not able to get the nVidia card to work with proprietary drivers. It’s so old that it requires legacy drivers (340) and I just ran out of patience. Nouveau or bust.

I am currently using it for casual web browsing and YouTube. It handles YouTube pretty well although I’m still searching for a native frontend that allows me to login to my YouTube account so I get all my subscriptions and stuff.