trying to pick a linux os on a labtop with 32 mb ram
 

I have a toshiba satelite pro 460 CDT it has
a Pentium 166 mhz
cd rom no floppy drive
32 mb ram
35 gig hd (the only reason why I haven't thrown this pos away)
screen with a max 800x600 resolution

what I want it to do is play mp3s, run msexcel spreadsheets, browse internet, fileshare through samba or some less resource extensive equivalent, and as a bonus gaim if it can handle it. I want this all on some sort of gui desktop. The kicker is that this labtop does not have an ethernet jack so I have to use a wireless card. I have an Airnet AWN108 wireless card with an arthos chipset. I have it working with the madwifi drivers under fedora core 5.

Any ideas on a distro for this thing. At least Hard drive space in not an issue.

I tried a hard disc install of dsl but the terminal went off the screen for the first time configuration and I had no idea what it was asking me to type in. I have a 4 gig flash drive for transfering the files to get the wireless working just need a distro and a procedure. windows 98 se worked pretty good on this thing but I would prefer not to be running on 8 yeah old software unless I have to. I figure with so many distros at least one of them has to be up to this challenge.

I would suggest DSL-N, DSL's fat brother. You can find him at http://damnsmalllinux.org/dsl-n/.

When you say DSL went off the screen, do you mean you could literally see nothing from the time it first booted? Try typing (whether you can see it or not):
Puppy Linux might also be a good bet.

cd-rom
 

well looks like this computer finally put itself out of its misery the cd-rom wont read anymore so I guess that means its time to throw it out and save the hard drive.

Thank you for your suggestions. wish I could have tested some of them.