Old ThinkPads

I’d probably go with Mint XFCE or those listed, or you can search for distros that target older hardware. I’ll get back to yo on that.

Edit: so, @thatonecoder@lemmy.ca, my main search was focusing on minimal distros for old hardware (less that 1 GiB of RAM that support x86 (i.e. 32 bit)), these may fit the bill: Tiny Core, Puppy, Porteus, Absolute, antiX, Q4OS, Slax, Sparky, MX, Bohdi, Zorin Lite, Xubuntu, Archbang, Slitaz, DSL.
From here on we’re on “may need ≥ 1 GiB” territory: Lubuntu, Lite, MATE, Peppermint, LXLE, LMDE, bunsenlabs, Crunchbang++, EasyOS.

Again, my focus was on low RAM usage and preferably supporting x86. Most distros aren’t Wayland-ready yet, bare that in mind.
As most said, Mint with XFCE is a good start and most distros offer a “live” version you can boot to try without installing.

Reminds me of the 56K handshake.

The Rust code isn’t closed source yet
FTFY

but they do exist and most of those would be solved with a memory and type safe language.

Maybe.

Still, there are other sources of bugs beyond memory management.

And i’d rather have GPL-ed potentially unsafe C code to… closed-source Rust code.

I fear moving away from GPL that moving to Rust seems to bring, but Rust does fix real memory issues.

So you prefer closed-source code to potentially unsafe open-source code?

Take the recent rsync vulnerabilities for example.

Already fixed, in software that’s existed for years and is used by millions. But Oh no, memory issues, let’s rewrite that in <language of the month>! will surely result in a better outcome.

as long as the linux kernel is still gpl.

I seem to recall some drama about rust in the kernel… what could that mean…

See other comments: all these rewrites are not using the GPL but rather permissive licenses like MIT. Bye-bye FOSS (in those ecosystems).

Kinda like a full 180° back to UNIX™.

Wrong target audience, Bob.

A few paragraphs would do wonders for the legibility of your post.