Oh damn! Yeah, no, the old Atom series will be slow on anything other than, like, Puppy Linux.

Here are a few distros to try:

• Puppy Linux
• EasyOS
• Fatdog64
• Absolute Linux
• Legacy OS
• Damn Small Linux
• Tiny Core
• GNU Guix
• Debian (use a lightweight WM, like Fluxbox or IceWM)
• Arch (again, use a lightweight WM)

And here are some software substitutions:

• Firefox -> Konqueror/Netsurf/Dillo/Lynx/Links2/w3m
• Thunderbird -> Claws Mail/NeoMutt
• LibreOffice -> AbiWord, Gnumeric, etc.

You will be able to run Firefox and Chromium, but they will be somewhat sluggish and likely to freeze or crash, in my experience.

Also, the suckless tools are really good for this. Back on my old Raspberry Pi, I used to be able to compile st and surf in under a minute, and dwm ran brilliantly.

~Source: my old Raspberry Pi, although arm-based, and my old MacBook had similar specs.~