Overall; disappointing. I am looking for a lightweight linux OS for some old laptops I am refurbishing and giving away to homeless people, so I was interested

Overall; disappointing. I am looking for a lightweight linux OS for some old laptops I am refurbishing and giving away to homeless people, so I was interested in this. The price thing threw me for a moment...paying for software without knowing its value? I did the $0 hack and downloaded the iso. Stuck the USB in my worse-case system (totally broken screen, low memory etc) hooked to an external monitor, and... Nothing, except for a screen full of mountains, which was odd because every other lightweight distro I've tried worked fine. I think maybe it detected two monitors and used the external one without the taskbar, but I couldn't really tell. The OS definitely loaded as I tried to log off and the screen for that popped up. An OS targeting low-end machines should definitely default to dupe-ing the display on boot. [edit] ok...can someone clue me into what I've done wrong with the explanation of my experience with trying to use it?