Friend has an old laptop with windows 10 that he doesn’t use because too slow and freezing all the time. Wants to revive it to leave at his lab in grad school for browsing the internet and editing stuff on google docs so he doesn’t have to carry his newer laptop everyday.
I suggested Linux but I myself always used Debian and I am not sure it will run decently with such low specs. Was thinking maybe Debian 11 with xfce or something? Any better options?
If your friend is not tech savvy person, i would go with Mint XFCE (maybe Zorin OS Lite). Surely, it will be not as lightweight as Debian, but it will be much more user friendly for him
If he actually feel comfortable tinkering with OS - along side Debian maybe Bodhi Linux or antiX? I tried both of them on one of (in)famous Intel-based netbooks with 512mb RAM and they worked quite well.