There must have been an issue with posting my last...the paragraph below. It did show an error, I just didn't know what to do with it. Anywho, thanks again Vrai, for your awesome detailed response. This helps sooo much to have the question answered. So now I know, if the machine is working properly, and I create the usb 'live' properly, most distros should work. I've been getting an error message in making the usb's. Etcher says the job was successfully completed, yet under that there is a red flag saying something failed, maybe something about checksum, which I did check the sha with GTK Hash and they matched. So I don't know if I'm doing something wrong there. I used gparted on the Mint Tricia I've currently got on the Fujitsu to delete the usb and reformat to fat 32, and tried to make a live usb of Manjaro and Mint Mate Tara. The extra RAM came and I'll install that along with a new HD as soon as I finish so charts that need done. Do I have to do anything to a brand new Hard Drive in order to use a live usb?
Saturday:
Hello Vrai, good to hear from you. How's the weather now up there? We went directly into summer, 70 in the shade and humid. Thank you for the clear and detailed guidance. Yes, as long as I can boot from the usb or dvd I should be set. Wasn't an issue before things got 'hung up'. I'm waiting on the 4GB additional Ram to arrive to bring me up to 8GB maximum RAM, today or tomorrow. Then I'll install the new HD and RAM and see about a final Linux install. I believe the HD is not formatted. Will the 'Live' distro take care of that or do I need to do that manually? If so, how? Hopefully all will flow into functionality without any more issues. 19.3 is currently functioning yet with glitches, with the main issue being my inability to access more storage space with Windows in the way. Folks say the 2008ish machine would do best with Mint 18 or older distros. Which distro would you grade as the most robust, stable distro for this older Fujitsu?