I'm looking to try out linux on my (old) Samsung V25 laptop (specs at bottom).

My needs are more or less:
Web browsing
Programming (C/C++)
Occasional open office
Occasional videos/music.
ie not really demanding

I've already had a try of
Ubuntu 9.0: slight graphics issues, won't wake after sleeping
Fedora 11: Sound wouldn't work
OpenSuse 11: crashed on video test of installation

It just occurred to me that perhaps I should try a 6 year old OS for a 6yr old laptop. This should have fewer hardware requirements but possibly would be less mature/stable/refined.

To cut a long story short, any advice on what distro I should use (and what version)? Are there old versions available? What configuration do I need to do to get it working?

Hardware Specs
Intel 82845GV chipset (integrated graphics)
Pentium 4 2.8GHz
512 MB RAM
30GB Harddrive
Netgear WG511T wireless PCMIA card

You should try to fix your problem...in the Linux distros. Minor tweaks should be sufficient. In Fedora 11, many changes were introduced.

You can try adding more RAM or get Vector Linux -6.0/ Dream Linux or Xubuntu

Thanks for your response.

I'll look into vector linux and dream linux.

I am prepared to try to fix any problems/configurations but I was looking for advice on a starting point to fix a broad range of issues before fine tuning.

For example, I already tried numerous "fixes" for Ubuntu including modifying the grub loader, updating the kernel to 2.6.30, and configuring xorg. These didn't work properly for me and it seems to be a known issue.

Edit: Is it possible to take the good bits from each distro, eg Use display drivers/settings from fedora on ubuntu, or sound driver/settings from ubuntu on fedora?

Slackware 13.0 You can choose between 32 and 64 bit version, depending upon your hardware.

There is a lag between the introduction of new hardware and the introduction of full support in Linux of new hardware - in the MS World, these details are worked out before the products hit the streets, in the Open Source world, many of the support issues for new hardware can only be worked out once the new hardware is actually in the wild, so an older distribution from that self-same era would more than likely yield an OS that doesn't have the most complete or up to date support wrt drivers, modules, etc., for the hardware in question.

Therefore, the latest version will have support for more hardware, and http://store.slackware.com is your best choice.

Ok back again (Didn't chance to do much on this in last 2 weeks)

Tried Slackware 13, but (I think) X crashes. A couple of times I got some graphics come up but I think KDE crashed.
Tried XFCE instead just now and it won't start.

Any advice?