I recently bought the cheapest mostly functional laptop I could find on eBay recently and have yet to install, or even decide what OS to install on it. It's an HP EliteBook 2730p - 12.1" - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz 4.0 GB RAM Laptop that I bought as simply a backup to my backup to my backup computer. You can never be too prepared. I'm trying to decide what OS to use and am pretty sure I'm going Linux, but am not picky. It just needs to be free.
Anyone have any suggestions as to what Linux distro I should use? I guess a better way to phrase that question would be... Suggestions on what distro would function well with only 4GB of RAM on such an old HP laptop??
The main objective at this point is to be able to use it for my business/work in case my Lenovo Flex 5-i1540 fails (I've been having problems with the battery not charging as the light just blinks orange). Although at some point, once I finally have some free time, I'd like to learn some ethical hacking and actually put it into practice possibly and try a bug bounty or some other freelance type mission involving ethical hacking. At this point I'm thinking Ubuntu 18.04 and just keeping a memory stick in my bag containing Kali Linux, but I'm unsure how well that recent of an Ubuntu distro will perform with only 4 GB of RAM. I should also mention there is no hard drive in the laptop, it has been removed. So I've basically turned an old internal 3.5" Seagate SATA HDD into an external HD w/ a super ghetto case and USB adapter cable. Since this laptop is only capable of USB 2.0 speeds (I hope...), I'm sure that will have an effect on the choice of Ubuntu/Linux version as well.
Any advice anyone has with this type of installation or undertaking would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!