I have thinkpad 560Z, PentiumII, 233MHz, 96MB RAM with 7G HD.

I will be installing DSL for only internet browsing, email, and playing of .flac music file (will be output to my stereo amplifier).

Since it is low power, interested in maximum speed. How should I install initially for maximal speed?

thanks,

gychang

Use frugal, add other apps as you require.

Agreed. I have a Pentium II with similar specs. It runs great on DSL frugal. In fact, DSL is the only Linux distro I've managed to get running on the computer.

am told Puppy works well with minimal resources.

gychang

I couldn't get it to work on my Pentium II with 96 megs of RAM. Of course, that might have something to do with some incompatible component and nothing to do with the processor or the amount of RAM. But, Puppy does have more memory-intensive applications built-in like (if my memory is correct) Abiword. I like to use Puppy as a lightweight desktop distro on a fairly new (or at least newish) computer. It's less bloated than the big boys like Ubuntu, but more bloated than DSL.

DSL is a really specialized distro to create the smallest memory footprint possible and still function as a near-full-featured GUI desktop. On something like a Pentium II with 96 megs of RAM, I really think Puppy would be too slow.

Luckily, since they're both LiveCDs, you can try them out before you commit. See which one works better for you on your hardware.

Another twist that you can consider: There is a pretty big community of PuppyLinux modders, and lots of PuppyLinux derivatives you can try out. Some are bigger than the default version of Puppy (and therefore not much use for your project), but others are smaller and more streamlined. You could try some of them out and see if one suits your needs.