Would like to load a version of linux on my real old Dell610. Just would like to get on the internet and check emails and may listen to music from youtube and just browse the web. Any help will be greatly appreciated. I have tried a couple of distros but they don't seem to work. Laptop keeps locking up. Thank you very much for your time and help! Here is some info on the laptop:

Processor a
1.87 gigahertz Intel Pentium M
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Not hyper-threaded
Drives
40.00 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
17.33 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST CDRW/DVD GCC4244 [Optical drive]

FUJITSU MHV2040AH [Hard drive] (40.01 GB) -- drive 0, s/n NT26T55288N3, rev 00000096, SMART Status: Healthy
*
Controllers
Intel(R) 82801FBM Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 2653
Primary IDE Channel [Controller]
Secondary IDE Channel [Controller]
Bus Adapters
Generic CardBus Controller
Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB Universal Host Controller - 2658
Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB Universal Host Controller - 2659el(R) 82801FB/FBM USB Universal Host
Int Controller - 265A
Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB Universal Host Controller - 265B
Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 265C

System Model
Dell Inc. Latitude D610
System Service Tag: 2K57C91 (support for this PC)
Chassis Serial Number: 2K57C91
Enclosure Type: Portable
Main Circuit Board b
Board: Dell Inc. 0U8082
Serial Number: .2K57C91.CN486436158720.
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. A06 10/02/2005
Memory Modules c,d
1016 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM_A' has 512 MB (serial number F44C30D6)
Slot 'DIMM_B' has 512 MB (serial number F607EC9A)

So are you going to wait for people to recommend those same distros before saying what they are?

https://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Old+Computers

In any case, the key problem is likely that you only have 1GB and today's browsers are bloated and memory hungry, as are websites like YouTube, so that's unlikely to be enough.

You might be able to get by with lightweight frontends like Invidious, or by downloading the videos with tools like yt-dlp and playing them outside the browser.

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Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

My suggestion would be antiX 32 bit version.

I have a laptop with a Pentium M and a 40 GB HD — slow but sure! The real limitation is the 1 GB of RAM. The obvious choices are MX Linux (perhaps a bit big), AntiX (that would run on far less memory), and Salix (Slackware-based rather than Debian-based). Don't forget to get the 32-bit version.

Agree, AntiX Base probably a good option - another could be Tiny Core Plus - & Devuan possibly, I've run (64bit) Devuan Live on a 1GB ram machine with a fairly slow processor, so an installation of the 32bit system could be an option.

(I believe Slackware still has 32bit, & could be an option too.)

A fairly different O/S is Haiku, it will run in 1GB ram, it may be worth a look for you.

Another Linux option would be Alpine.
FreeDOS would run on that, but it is not at all Linux like.
I might be tempted to run ReactOS for a Windows-like environment, as one option.

TinyCore should run on that, with or without installation.

No matter what you run your hardware will limit what you do and what performance you derive. To mitigate this always select the smallest, fastest option for what you choose to do. This pretty much means the latest and most popular browsers, work processors, spreadsheets, and desktops will not be good choices. You get to learn about the edge cases and great software most people never see! ;-)

Another vote for Antix. And another decent option would be Bodhi.

I'd recommend smtube for youtube playback. You probably won't get better than 360p in a browser, but with smtube 720p no problem. (It uses yt-dlp to get video and plays in regular media player like mpv so you get hardware acceleration.)

Debian/Devuan have been suggested and they would run, but the official installers are not for lightweight GUIs. My Pentium M is a Banias, which only Debian itself provides a kernel for, so that's what I use — it was a long struggle to get it working properly, though. Slackware was also suggested, but that's probably too big — Salix, which I recommended, is a fully-compatible Salix derivative.

Lockup usually are hardware related. I bet no TIM paste been re-applied or laptop cleaned for dust buildup which is a insulator.

I had a sata connector crumble into dust on a IBM tower newer than yours. < It was locking up with a installed system.>

So might want to inspect it. I have the same Pentium M on a Panasonic cf-48 I used to install antiX on. It sits in a bag now as I have better gear now.

Popular browsers are gonna hammer the cpu on that laptop.

Install video

It is a older video but we are talking older gear here, Not a lot people running older lately.

I think some people forget what sh** there was about back in the last millenium. I ran linux and X on 128MB of ram and a glorified 486 (AMD 80586-133≅P75) for years back then.

Your hardware is very hackable. So I would suggest a historic OS, absolutely no servers online and no ports open, and minimal periods online. Nobody will have the elementary hacks that would split that box open, because they don't work on anything today.

For a browser I'd suggest palemoon, which is a fork from firefox-25.x. That's very old fork from firefox. A modern palemoon version, if it runs. Use a self-contained binary download, not one relying on your (historic) libs. Palemoon is 38 Megs or so, and does reasonably well.

A big software change came in 2004, when all the fixed I/O officially went, although compatibility support was kept for a year or two. You simply don't need modern software offering support for things you haven't got.

You may hit some HD issues with the BIOS, but I think linux started ignoring all that stuff a long time back.