I decide to go with frugal install. Since there is nothing in laptop, I decide to wipe everything and use only the first 51GB of the HDD.
I found the video below and it is very useful.
Also, with the help of AI (have to rerun and check forum because some steps are missing for the grub installation), below are my steps.
Assume you have prepared a bootable USB with Antix26. In my case, it is 64 bits and boot option is MBR.
Choose normal boot from USB. Then open console.
1) [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "UEFI" || echo "Legacy BIOS"
This will tell you whether it is UEFI or Legacy BIOS.
2) In case you have multiple drives, run lsblk to list them all and decide which one to use. With my T400, there is only one drive and it is /dev/sda. So, all the screenshots below will be /dev/sda.
3) Because I don't need the data in the disk, I delete all the partitions with parted command.
Step 4-7 to create a new partition with 51GB, make it bootable and label the partition antiX-Frugal. /dev/sdX is the target of the frugal install.
4) sudo parted -s /dev/sdX mklabel msdos
5) sudo parted -s /dev/sdX mkpart primary ext4 1MiB 51GB
6) sudo parted -s /dev/sdX set 1 boot on
7) sudo mkfs.ext4 -F -L antiX-Frugal /dev/sdX1
Now reboot and boot from USB again. This time chooses the frugal_install option in the advance boot menu. I decide to go with frugal_root. Click the link below to see the difference.
8) Select the partition for the frugal installation target another option. Default should be the one with antiX-Frugal label.
9) For persistence, I choose semi option (prompt you to save or not save when you reboot or shutdown).
10) setup passport for root and demo
11) ls -la /live/boot-dev
Check your frugal path. You can also browse and find it from file manager.
12) Also run mount -l to list all the mount pt.
If /mnt/frugal does not exist, create and mount the partition where frugal install resides.
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/frugal
sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/frugal
13) sudo grub-install --target=i386-pc --boot-directory=/live/boot-dev/boot /dev/sdX
Install grub on /dev/sdX
14) sudo mkdir -p /mnt/frugal/boot/grub
Does not require if the directory existed
15) sudo cp /mnt/frugal/antiX-Frugal_Install_dir/grub.entry /mnt/frugal/boot/grub/grub.cfg
Copy the grub.entry file from frugal install to the /dev/sdX
16) Use nano to add toram option to the boot entry in /mnt/frugal/boot/grub/grub.cfg
Now shutdown and save. Remove the USB drive. Power on the computer and it will copy the boot image from HDD to RAM then boot up.
Since it is only an old 2 Core processor in 2008, even load in memory, playing 720p youtube video is still choppy. Opening word and spreadsheet are pretty fast. Because I can choose not to save change, I don't need to worry about browsing history or other sensitive info left in the machine.
