Though I do not recommend this model due to it's age and low performance. If you are looking for a low cost machine and do not mind lots of trouble shooting and experimenting to get it working like you want then it is not so bad.
Here is a failsafe way of using Linux on this model (with DSL)
http://home.earthlink.net/~porsche91...x-toshiba.html
I am using the latest version of the bios (6.50) and I have 144 MB of memory and 20+ GB of internal storage. (the stock 2.1 GB is not good for much) Most of your lightweight distro run well with this hardware. I was impressed in the end though by how well Slackware 12 does (After a lot of trouble shooting and experimenting). I did not strip down the installation in the least and run it with xfce window manager. It is a little tricky getting a working configuration for xorg to begin with though. The only way I found that works is to open xorg.conf with vim and manually edit the settings according to the spec sheet for this model.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache...ient=firefox-a
(Google keywords [ tecra 730 pdf ] without brackets for a pdf version.)I recommend using the vesa driver to begin with.
As for the lightweight distro, most are a very easy and uninvolved process to install and use with this hardware.
I am satisfied with the mine.
