Which version to use on old machine

My current version of Zorin (6 ultimate, based on Ubuntu 12.04) is working just fine. I plan to keep it for the next couple of years until I replace it with the version based on Ubuntu 16.04.

My question iinvolves a machine I want to give to a 7 year old nephew. He mostly watches cartoons on youtube, and plays some simple retro games. I have an old Windows XP machine that has trouble accessing youtube without a lot of access violation messages that drive him, and me, a little batty. The machine is a single core Pentium M, 1.6 ghz, 640 MB RAM and an 80 GB hard drive. Too small and slow for Windows 7. It still works and has a dual battery system.

Thus I am looking for a linux distro I can install so he can surf the web, print , play audio and video files. I was wondering if there is a Zorin distro people can recommend or if not, some other lightweight distro that I can install on the hard drive and let him use standalone.

Thanks
Jojo

Hi, well if Zorin 9 Lite ends up too heavy, here are some that I like:

LXLE 12.04.4 revisited or even LXLE 14.04 which is as Iunderstand it, also LTS (http://lxle.net - the only downside is that it is via torrent). You could also give SLAX a try (only 200 Mb image!) http://www.slax.org/ or Quelitu:

http://wavesofthefuture.net/computers/l ... free.shtml

For a raft of options:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweig ... stribution

Hope you get sorted!

Solved:
Hi Swarfendor437. Thanks for the reply. The Zorin9 Light instructions page (Lubuntu) said that you need at least 1GB RAM to run net based apps like YouTube. My grandson is a big fan of YouTube and I am giving this computer to him. So I will look into some of your other recommendations to see which looks best. Quelitu looks interesting, but from their web page it looks a little buggy and perhaps difficult to install. It recommends to install beside as an installation option. Slax looks interesting.
Thanks again.
Jojo
PS. I posed a similar question on installation about a half hour ago. I will mark that solved too.

Hi, I haven't tried the 32-bit versions but Peppermint 5 and Netrunner14 are a couple of other options - bearing in mind the latter is a KDE desktop. Also not visited Bodhi Linux in a while. For codecs that work out of the box on lightweights then LXLE has been good. Been a while since I tinkered with Slax - might take a look myself!!

Thanks Swarfendor437. I plan to check out LXLE since my main interest is to permit my now eight year old grandson to use Youtube and play some simple kids games, so codecs are an issue. Thanks for the followup. I plan to install one of the distros this weekend, starting with LXLE. I'll post the results next Monday.
all the best
Jojo

Just thought I would report back on Slax 7 - it will not install - without an existing GNU/Linux OS! It is only meant to be portable, either CD or USB - but there is a workaround - hope you got LXLE sorted!