Just to help make things clear I did post on the ThinkPad and the Linux distro I'm running on that tired old toy is Puppy Linux. It's the best one for it because it is so small and efficient. It creates a RAM disk and everything loads into memory. Running that way it is blindingly fast. Hardly any I/O to the hard disk. So, now you have it, the next fun OS to use bringing the old hardware back to life.
Go to www.puppylinux.com to learn more about it and get it if you want to play. Have fun!