Twig

A Thinkpad will have to do

That and nearly everyone else has those same thoughts.

Pretty sure DDG, Ecosia and Bing all use the same backend?

XMMS, Beep, Audacious or whatever were always good enough.

Where's the best place to start?

A minimal and stable distro, kinda expected

I think the users are off-putting. Can get very blunt in the forums.

The Digital Antiquarian

Second that. Amazing blog

Kinda picked it at random when scrolling through my choices.

and split it into several files with hjsplit

Phonograph Plus is pretty good.