i am putting linux on to my sisters laptop because windows was a little too sluggish on 128 mb of ram, and picked up more than a few viruses. i have tried quite a few distributions so far but none of them have been very good. please could someone advise me on a distribution that:

* works fine on 128 mb of ram
* has good hardware support
* preferably comes with OOo, Gimp and Firefox
* Is relatively easy to use, or easy enough for me to set up so that my sister can use it.


so far i have tried

* Ubuntu - not enough ram for it
* Arch linux - too complicated, couldnt get a decent DE on it
* Slackware - ditto
* Zenwalk - pretty good, i liked the XFCE, so i might go back to this
* Vector Linux - Didnt detect the graphics card right, messed up the display settings



also, it would be good if it had everythig to get the gui running included in the cd or at least on the cd rom, because i have never attempted to set up an internet connection without a gui.

cheers

I was going to say "NOT AGAIN" as I've read at least 5 similar threads just today... but fortunately this one is a little more specific.

To find out more about distros have a look at www.distrowatch.com

As for a working suggesion: I've tried Fedora Core - if the gui installer doesn't work, the text install is really quite 'gui' as well. After that instaed of trying KDE or Gnome which are memory hungry, use a lightweight DE like XFCE or fluxbox.

yeah i really like XFCE, its as pretty as GNOME, but much faster

what is your opinion of MEPIS? i cant really find out about system requirements on their site...

how easy is it to get FC installed and booting XFCE?

cheers for the reply tho

Have you looked at DSL and Puppy?

These are minimalistic distros you can build on.

lol im not good enough to build on them. but i do have dsl, and it is very good. however i have now installed MEPIS, and it rucking focks. to begin with it looked a little ugly, like kde does so often, but i tweaked and it looks nice. i put all the stuff in a better layout. and it runs perfectly fast.

so i think im sorted

I would say arch linux but I see you already tried and found it too hard to install a decent DE. It's really not that hard if you ask for help on the archlinux forum: bbs.archlinux.org
You'd be very satisfied with the end result once you get it installed (installing arch really goes fast..). It boots incredibly fast, runs fast , is easy to upgrade , ... Just be sure to download the 0.7.1 pre iso( ftp://ftp.belnet.be/packages/archlinux/0.7.1/iso/i686/ ) if you try it, there have been big changes since 0.7.0. Well anyway, I don't want to persuade you, but if you need help to install and configure arch. Just ask, you'll get answers and learn.

Really, arch linux saves me plenty of time because it's so simple. I found no other distro where it's so easy to install the binary ati drivers for example, or the mplayer and flash plugin for firefox.


Slackware ditto? Slackware was the first linux I got installed because it's so easy, did you select KDE or Gnome to install in the installer? That's all that should be done to install a DE in slackware. I bet xfce can also be chosen in the installer, but I don't know for sure.


What kind of internet connection do you use? As I could point out how to get you online in the console (or during install). It's really not that hard.

Just ask here if you need help about installing anything. With such help you can install any linux distro. Just ask.

It's possible to get ubuntu running with xfce also, which will be much less resource heavy. You can do a server install which won't install any desktop initially, then do apt-get install xubuntu-desktop. That might be another option worth checking out.