Speeding Up An Old Computer

It's funny seeing the replies here, especially the one that suggests to overclock an 8 year old mobile CPU.

Something to consider here is that your CPU is not that bad, 1.2 GHz is it's base clock, not turbo, RAM is still okay as well, impossible to tell serious specifics without any direct model numbers of performance provided (RAM type: LPDDR3 or DDR3L? Hard drive RPM, speed?).

I mean, yeah, a dualcore and it's integrated graphics are not the best PC in 2020, let alone a good one, it doesn't mean that it's a lost cause. It'd work fairly well with Linux, Wabz already stated his distributions of choice, and it's fine, but I'd personally recommend you some lightweight experience with KDE, perhaps Kubuntu. I also wouldn't recommend using XFCE anymore, while arguments can still be made about it's simplicity, I cannot say the same nowadays about it's performance, as due to the large developer support for KDE, XFCE has lost its major edge in terms of performance. Of course, everything depends on how you configure it, if you get a bunch of aero-like styles and flashy things on your KDE, expect to perhaps have higher RAM or GPU usage.

@Vader i think i started a california wildfire

@Aquatic Helpful

Also where have  you been

I don't know, I'm like some NPC, loaded into RAM only when needed.

@Aquatic So XFCE is less performant than KDE? If that's the case, i think Kubuntu or Manjaro KDE would be a better choice, because i don't like XFCE (i prefer KDE Plasma).

@Wabz I wouldn't exactly say that it's less performant, just that the performance gap is now so low that it's definitely not worth using XFCE anymore, this is due to the fact that XFCE has notably a lot less developers and general attention towards it than KDE.