Ok I was trying out different distros and editing an earlier post not thinking about all those who have made suggestions and the fact that they probably aren't going back to page 1 and looking at my edits. For that I apologize. Here is what I have so far. The list dosen't reflect all my testing as I am trying to get some distros working before just nixing them. I am trying to be thorough not just for myself but for others that might need this thread.

This is the machine I am putting my choice on:
Sager w 20gb HDD, P3 800mhz, 128Mb ram, USB 1.1 x 2, PMCMIA x 2, a floppy and a DVD burner.

1. Slitaz- pretty, intuitive(B), WifI- supposively but I can't get it, Ethernet-sometimes, browser-404DnS, pkgs-yes/many, nice all-in-one panel, speed - not bad, RAM- , easy mount- yes, size-30Mb

2. Tiny Core Plus -Very clean appearance w/a simple and intuitive interface. Appears to be a stripped down and reskinned version of DSL. I couldn't do ANYthing but change the wallpaper. This means if you do not have an ethernet port or a supported Wifi card you are stuck doing nothing but clicking pretty animated Icons and trying to find something, anything to mess around with. I am not condemning TC but for a Noob there is nothing I found that I was capable of doing. size 62Mb I am going to work on this because I like its clean appearance.

3. Salix Xfce -Ok it won't boot on my intended machine but I thought I should rate it. It found my wireless and asked for a password. It found my wireless printer and set it up. It found all my partitions and lets me browse them. It's pretty and very customizable. Uses firefox and is quick with746 Mb ram. Very nice presentation with the menus and rt click options. There are a few more apps than I will need but those can be got rid of. This is exactly what I was looking for in regards to function. I will need to strip it down to a more basic WM but I couldn't ask for more. I give it an A++ in everycatigory only because it is what I was hoping for. I am going to try the fluxbox version install cd.

4. Crunchbag-Decent looks customizable,intuativeness(D+),wifi plug and play,browser-IceWeasel(B+),pkgs-synaptic pkg mgr/many,unfriendly rt click menu(no icons), speed- pretty good, RAM- , easy mount-no, size-692Mb

5. antiX - good looks customizable, intuative(C), Wifi- plug Configure & play,Browser iceape(B) also Dillo(D+), PKGS- Snyaptic - many,Ok rt click menu/quick launch/start menu, speed good, RAM -I got it up to 103 mb used W/O swap B4 it started to lag ,Easy mount-NO, Size -

6. Vector Light - Burned-apparently this one's not live will install 672 Mb

7. Wary - Wow great wireless wizard at the beginning, Good looking interface littered with icons on the desktop, seemed zippy as I tried but failed to set up wireless; though the card was detected right off and a list of drivers was offered. Decent menu with options, will have to test further. 143Mb

8. Zenix- Way beyond my skills. I didn't even recognize many of the app names. I couldn't figure out how to set up wireless. Very fancy wallpaper and a nice BIG rendition of conky with color schemes. 634 Mb

9. Absolute Linux - can't get it yet - I give up

10. ConnochaetOS - http://www.connochaetos.org/wiki/ - Never tried it

11. Slackware - Salix ix a Slackware Distro with 4 diff window managers

12. SwiftLinux - Kept hanging and dropping any graphics ie desktop & windows disappeard @ 60% ram usage -682Mb

13. Damn Small Linux - Nice looking, Intuative(C),Wifi plug and play but not for me, Browser Speed -?, Speed-good(B),Pkgs- Synaptic can add debian Repos, Menus-good, Ram use- 192 avg, Easy mount- NO

14. Archlinux - Burned the wrong architecture iso. Looks nice on my other machine. - 193Mb

That is the spirit, i do like to fiddle with old computers as well, and it worth the effort to get them running with modern systems, and it is only possible with Linux, not sure if anyone mentioned here but Debian is one good choice if you do minimal/custom install, with all lightweight software, window manager no DE, also you could recompile the kernel to max out the possibilities, check this, yes old computers are fun, and NOT obsolete, well maybe in some points of view but still they can be used for many simple tasks.

Regards

1 members found this post helpful.

What's DE? and it looks like a good part of my list is Debian based if I'm not wrong. What's the difference between Debian standard and Xfce desktop versions? As long as I can get the wireless and browsers working so I can search the forums on the old machine I don't mind having to install other packages. I am still trying to figure out how to add anything to Tiny core.

Nice desktop where do I get one? Does that say 292mhz? Does it surf well? How's the music playback?

DE means Desktop Environment, but you don't want DE but WM(Window Manager), you can find more about it here: http://xwinman.org/

Default Debian install goes with Gnome, and you have the option to pick other DEs, but i wouldn't do that in your case, go with minimal install then just install the minimal you need, xorg, WM, browser, etc.

It isn't a desktop really, but window manager, Blackbox. Yes the processor does 292MHZ(250 real speed) with a little over clock!!! Yes again it does, i can browse internet, listen to music(plays just fine) and other things. OH and it only has 96 MB RAM !!

Regards

DE is the abbreviation for Desktop Environment. DEs usually have a number of tools for the daily work, like text editor, file-manager and the like. Different DEs have different looks and different resource usage. The heavy ones, like KDE 4 and Gnome 3/Unity/Cinnamon need the most ressources and run best on multicore CPUs with somewhat recent video-card, but have many visual effects and all the bells and whistles. Then there are the medium sized like Trinity (formerly KDE 3.5), Gnome 2 (and its fork MATE). They run good on older computers (about 512MB RAM). ANd there are the lightest ones, like XFCE (256MB recommended) and LXDE (128MB minimum).
One of the applications that any DE contains is the window manager (in short WM), the application that actually handles the windows and gives them title bars and things. There are much more WMs as DEs and you can run them standalone, without desktop environment. antiX, for example, uses IceWM, if I remember correctly, Crunchbang uses either Openbox or a modified XFCE (dependend on which version you download) and so on. The most used WMs are Openbox, Fluxbox, IceWM, WindowMaker, FVWM2 and Enlightenment (the one on ukiuki's screenshot is Blackbox, very lightweight, but also not developed anymore). There are also a bunch of tiling WMs (my favorite i3 is one of them), they are rather a special case.
Since all those WMs come without the tools of a DE (many don't even have a statusbar/taskbar) you have to install them on your own if you want to use them. This is quite handy if you want to run a very lightweight system, because you can handpick the lightweight programs. This is the way it is done with antiX (which is based on Mepis, which in turn is based on Debian).

So the difference between the default Debian version and the XFCE version is the DE and some applications that are installed with it.

Agreed, not much difference and Netsurf isn't to everyones choice for sure.

To be honest, theres only so much a machine with 128MB RAM can do at once regardless of whether it runs from RAM or not - we're not going to be running firefox browsing and youtube vids whilst reading email with Thunderbird. We have both agreed, I think, on other posts that command line would be the way to go with limited resources.

Well I did one more test, rather than use TinyCore I decided to crank up my custom Debian distro running IceWM. The web browser used in this distro is xxxterm (now known as xombrero) and is webkit based - so no horrible look a la Netsurf. So with xxxterm rendering LQ's homepage and conky running it is using 39MB RAM

I still enjoy TinyCore for its sheer snappyness - using it on a 733MHz P3 with 64MB RAM.

Perhap LQ should have a competition to see what truly minimal working configuration someone can come up with for a low specced PC?

And I thought every distro I downloaded was running a desktop environment. Is X11 a WM or a DE? It is what kept Salix from loading. I wasted a bunch of time checking out the distros on a higher speced laptop before trying to put them on the 'OTHER' box. I should have just burned them then sat down and tried to boot 1 by 1. So far only the really lightweight hitters like TC, DSL, Slitaz, Crunchbang,etc... seemed to run the way they were meant to. antiX, wary,and Zenix did well enough that I will consider them (well not Zenix) seriously. Swift linux was just too much for a P3 and 128Mb ram the rest on my list are still being re-downloaded and/or burned because I screwed them up somehow. I now know I will have to run just a WM and the bare essentials to keep this thing going smoothly. I don't like the idea of having to install a new release just to get the updates so that is a mark against the RAM Robbers (Yes that is my own term). I do like the rolling releases and the multiple ways to get stuff. (apt-get, pkg mgr, software mgr) though those minus apt-get will use up resources. There are a lot of things to consider when choosing an OS but I don't mind. I GET to choose from many, many, options as opposed to home, professional or ultimate. I am enjoying myself as I explore this strange new world and I appreciate everyone in the forums that take the time to answer and explain things to me.

I am leaning towards Slitaz or antiX at the moment with TC and Wary maybe dual booted for learning purposes. I will try to get Salix running too.

Neither. X11 is the base on which the WMs/DEs build up, it delivers the basic graphic functions.

AntiX uses IceWM plus a choice of four others window managers in the full version. Crunchbang now only uses Openbox - shame it dropped XFCE but, at least you can install it via the repos's

I guess you either love or hate tiling window managers (I have phases of both). Awesome, dwm and i3 are among the favourites as are more minimalist versions such as ratpoison and scrotwm (now spectrwm) - i have my own screenie of spectrwm here.

Ok after following ukiuki's link to WMs I understand that a DE contains a WM but not vise versa. It seems to me once a WM is loaded up with all the themes, apps, customizations, tools and what not it pretty much becomes a DE? I also learned X11 is a WM. D2m guess not on the x11 thing.

I just booted Salix in my lessold machine to see if the new burned live cd was ok and I got to say I am real impressed with it. I really want to get this on the old p3. If it keeps failing at the same spot during boot (X11) does that mean the machine just can't handle it or is it just due to my bad cd drive? I read I can remaster it. Does that mean I can get rid of X11 and replace it with something else?

TobiSGD I must thank you for throwing out Salix as an option. I got the Xfce version and if I can't get it on my old box it will definitely go on some of my P4s if it will work. Though all the suggestions were great (The distros I chose were a flop) They all have a place. There are more than one that would fit my needs but Salix has everything out of the box with minimal effort. Very noobie friendly. I intend to settle with antiX for now and work TC and Slitaz on the side. But my new mission is to get Salix to where it loads on the P3. I am hoping just changing out the CD drive again will let me load it. Or I'll just swap the HDD to a newer machine, Install swap again and see how it goes.

True.

You can see it that way. A DE is a WM that comes with all the tools needed for everyday work. If you install a WM only and then add this tools yourself you pretty much have a custom DE.

Wrong. X11 is the name for the basic program that makes graphics possible. All WMs build on top of X11, in the same way as all DEs have to build on a WM. At this time X11 is not replaceable, see it this way: X11 -> WM -> DE

Live CDs need a somewhat huge amount of RAM. This may be the culprit here, try it with a real install CD. Remastering means that you can build your own Salix version with the programs you want to be integrated. At this time, X11 is not replaceable.

XFCE is not really an option on that machine, try it with the LXDE or better the Fluxbox version.

At first I would try it with an install CD instead of the live one.

This should also work. Keep in mind that you might need an adapter to use a laptop disk in a desktop machine.

Thank you TobiSGD. So if I get Salix Fluxbox on there and it seems to be working well if I want I can change to LXDE w/o reinstalling everything? Just add a new WM or replace it?

Well whatever DE you pick will use way more memory than any WM, the more you save now more will be available later, Fluxbox is lightweight but you can go even lighter, give a shot on Blackbox it is stable and lightning fast, or Hackedbox which is a striped version of Blackbox. Nobody mentioned here, but a terminal is something you will be using quite a bit for that again you want low memory footprint programs, rxvt-unicode or rxvt-unicode-lite is one good option, why? Because you can run a deamon and then clients which will save lots of RAM, you can run 3-4 terminals for the price of one.

Regards

Thanks for the info ukiuk . Can I just strip away the DE from Salix and run the WM? I thought Fluxbox was Just a WM. I installed antiX - Fluxbox on the machine for now and it's doing fine but I haven't gotten the wifi set up yet. That might make a huge difference. Also isn't Fluxbox just the next generation of Black-box? I will have to go with GUIs because I don't know anything about CLIs yet. I can't even pull up a directory or find my home folder. I will be able to eventually though. I am just too new to all this. It kinda P!$$es me off. My kids will be raised on Linux.