I'm enjoying the simplicity of Debian v5 (Lenny) on the old desktop
[0]. I realized shortly after the install that I didn't have to rely
on the DVDs I had burned to install packages on this box, I could
take advantage of the Debian archive mirror itself, which works with
Lenny and this sources.list:

    deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib
    deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports main
    deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports-sloppy main

The catch is that the archive signing key has long since expired, so
you have to take your use of apt on faith and install packages
without verification. I wouldn't trust a box this old as a server on
the public internet, but this is a home desktop, so I'm fine with
that caveat.

So what is the draw? The simplicity is definitely a major part of
it - I think simplicity is underrated today when it comes to the
current crop of Linux distributions. Complex "solutions" like
systemd will always be harder to keep stable and secure. It's one
philosophy the BSDs continue to get right versus Linux, but was
still prevalent in older Linux distributions like Lenny.

Part of it, too, is the forced austerity in that I can't do much
else but local desktop applications, shell and gopher on this box,
given the limitations of ancient iceweasel on a modern web. I could
probably setup a TLS proxy on an outside server, but that seems a
bit like cheating. Best to leave it and enjoy as-is.

[0]: gopher://gopher.unixlore.net/0/glog/debian-lenny.md