ancient thinkpad dilemma

Hi y'all

So I found at least 5 Thinkpad R51e in my school's storage room. They're bulky AF, but they're uhh melting and one of them makes cracking noises when opened. Are they still worth it to take home? What Linux distro runs best on these things and how to optimize them?

Pentium M

likely 512MB DDR2

a 160gb HDD I guess