I have an old Dell Latitude D300XT that I would like to install linux on. I need to decide which distro to use. My criteria are:
sound (it uses a CS4236 chipset which causes HUGE headaches)
ACPI
not incredibly slow (I know I can't use KDE and I don't really like gnome but XCFE and IceWM are ok
runs openoffice
runs wine with Starcraft

I also prefer a package system for all this but I could do without. I have previously installed and run FC4 (nice), Damn Small Linux (too customized for dpkg to work), Vector Linux (too many hardware incompatibilites), Slackware (nice), and Debian (nice). What should I do?

Note to mods: right after posting this I realized it should be in Linux Distros. Sorry.

Hmm... it sounds like you've already tried a lot of the light weight distros. What turns you away from them?

I don't think you'll be able to run Starcraft (espessially through emulation, which requires some decent power) on a machine of that age.

It ran fine in windows and slowly on Debian, so I am inclined to think it will work. My main requirement for a window manager is that it has a Desktop folder and I can put folders and documents on it. This is what made me dislike DSL, combined with the fact that I had no sound and no ACPI battery meter. Fedora and Slackware haven;t been tried on this, Debian was too slow (if I could install debian without KDE it would probably be better but I can't get it to automatically start the x-server so I can use KDM). Vector had no sound, problems starting GUI's from the command like (couldn't connect to X-server), etc.

you can install debian without kde there are a number of lightweight window managers, such as fluxbox, xfce. Fluxbox won't give you a desktop folder, but you can run konqueror which gives you a nice gui for manipulating folders and files. Try gdm instead of kdm, it might cooperate more with fluxbox, but I think both of them work fine.

The key issue here is not the speed of the proc but how much memory you have. I have a 300MHz IBM laptop with 96MB of RAM and it runs Debian stable and KDE fine. It's not lightening fast but is useable.

It has 64MB of RAM. I did try Debian withoud KDE once but had trouble as gdm and kdm could nto start because it didn't automatically start the x-server. How could I get it to automatically start?

Perhaps you have a problem with the x-server. At the command line do startx and see if it is reporting ant errors.

That install has been overwritten, but there were no errors, it just didn't start the x-server before it tried to start gdm. I need it to do this as I am not the only user of this computer.

maybe you should try zenwalk. Its a slack based distro with xfce as the DE also they always have a nice up to date OOo in the repositories. Ran fine on an old pentium 2 with 32mb of ram i had at my girlfriend's house.

gentoo if youve got time, or arch (i think its a i686, right?)

Try Zenwalk and you'll love it. I ran Gentoo and arch before. Every other word out of my mouth was Gentoo....

Till I tried Zenwalk.

A single 500MB iso, around 30mins and your on your way. Everything works. Easy ncurses install and nearly automated post install configuration right after first boot.

Based on slackware but with more user friendly tools and alot of the time more current than Gentoo applications

Now I have hit a wall. Zenwalk will not read my cd. It is a Torisan U_200 (crap) and Mandriva and Gentoo had problems with it too. In neither case I got it to work. I tried both the ata and scsi kernels from zenwalk. What can I do?

After looking at a thread for similar problems on their forum< I am copying the install cd to the hard drive. Cross your fingers!

slackware, with kde should work fine. and I got starcraft running on a 486 with 32 megs of ran in windows, at FULL speed. you may want to run kde 3.5 the newer ones tend to run faster then the older ones. you may want to run the 2.6 kernel that comes with 10.2

You can do a lightweight ubuntu install for older systems. (Ubuntu is my distro of choice).

The lightweight system runs XFCE, but to get it working, you first need to do a console only install, then a single command will install everything needed for xfce.

If you get hold of an ubuntu disc, at the install boot prompt, type "server" (without "") and press enter. It will install a console only system. Log in with the user you created during install, and run:
enter your user's password when asked. It will download and install all the required packages. I am told that this runs very well on older systems.