I use a 12-year old Dell laptop (upgraded to 4GB RAM) as my main computer and I’ve been using Lubuntu for the past 6 years for the same reasons you describe. I was also a little disappointed that the focus of the project is no longer to produce a light-weight and efficient desktop – though I don’t object to their new goal.
I’ve been running Lubuntu 16.04 for the past three years but I recently thought I’d update my system. The options I boiled down to were either Debian (the parent and grandparent of so many distributions) or one of the successors to CrunchBang Linux (a light-weight distribution based around the Openbox window manager), BunsenLabs [1] or CrunchBang++ [2].
In the end, I decided that since it was only a few days to wait, I’d try the new LTS version of Lubuntu †. Apparently, its LXQt desktop is just as light as LXDE so I figured it’s worth trying out.
Update: I see the Lubuntu 20.04 LTS has been released [1] since I posted earlier today. :) Kudos to the maintainers!
I forgot to mention in my post above that I had purchased an SSD a while ago and this is what prompted me to consider the available options for updating/changing the OS.
I’ve been running Lubuntu 16.04 for the past three years but I recently thought I’d update my system. The options I boiled down to were either Debian (the parent and grandparent of so many distributions) or one of the successors to CrunchBang Linux (a light-weight distribution based around the Openbox window manager), BunsenLabs [1] or CrunchBang++ [2].
In the end, I decided that since it was only a few days to wait, I’d try the new LTS version of Lubuntu †. Apparently, its LXQt desktop is just as light as LXDE so I figured it’s worth trying out.
[1] https://www.bunsenlabs.org/
[2] https://crunchbangplusplus.org/
† Not available just yet according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FocalFossa/ReleaseNotes#Official_fla...