Which distro does have the best support for my Laptop?

Specs:
Celeron 400MHz
160MB SO-DIMM RAM
Sillion 16MB XVGA Video Card(Viritual Video Memory)
100Mbit Ethernet Card Using RJ-11(cable)
6 GB 2000RPM HDD
Huge lithium Battery Capable of 3 hours of load
14,1 " TFT Monitor
Unkown Soundcard

I have these distroes at CD's: Red Hat 9.0, Slackware 9.1, Slackware 9.0 and Slackware 8.1.
Which distro is the best for my laptop?
Will it support my videocard(who is not supported or funcion normally under Win9x(but it is under Win3x!), WinNT or WinXP). I've tried many OSs, and I hope my and I'll figure this out; but how?
Does Linux Support Viritual Video Memory(VVM)? I've flashed the sysbios, and the video bios(which is virtual, loaded to hd).

Your 160MB of RAM is a little light for RH 9. I have not tried your Slackware distros. The slackware homepage says 16MB is required + unspecified more to run X.

I don't recognize your Sillion video card, and a quick google search did not bring up anything either. If you mean Silicon Magic, these are fairly well supported by XFree86 (the X windows subsystem you will be using).

If you have time, why don't you try one of the distros that you have available? An hour's install will tell you whether things are going to work or not. If not - try another distro. You have plenty available !! There's no real reason why anything should fail to work - but once you have a distro installed, linuxquestions.org is the place to come. Go on - risk it!!! Try a distro and step into the unknown. You've already backed up your personal files so....away you go! Good luck!

mdk 9.2 could do find but kde3 is kinda heavy.
i have 100 meg of ram used after boot (but if u consider 43 meg used in cache only)

Try slackware 9.1.... clean, quick, and can install from everything just about. RPMs, DEBs, or tars. It is pretty nice.... but the support.... well.... that is why we have places like this!!!

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I should be more specific... the packages for programs can be installed from just about everything. Sorry.

I've used Mandrake 9.0 and Slackware 9.0 on mine with 128 meg of ram (some of which is used as video ram as well).

Just take the plunge.

Cheers
Amos

Does it really manage any package format ?

what slack can do is take an RPM or DEB, using a program, and make it into a tarball. Then it can install it. This is not the most efficent way of dealing with packages... the RPM and DEB methods are far better. However, and RPM can only install by an OS accepting RPMs... and so on. Pros and cons on each end.

Damn ! I was starting to hope....

There are some pros to Slackware... but looking at Mandrake 9.2 powerpack.... it really comes with a lot of applications with the default install. Slackware does not come with all the programs but it is free... Man9.2 is $70. So..... there is some differences. I am using a Dell Latitude C600, 750 MHz, 256mb, with RH9. With the recent happenings of RH :-( I am going to switch to Mandrake 9.2 powerpack. After all... I am willing to pay $70 for the software if the features are there.... I really like RH but.... times change.

macintosh PowerBook G3 (Lombard)
192 mb ram
Yellow Dog Linux (3.0.1)
... well, that's the system i'm trying to get wireless networking running...

If you want speed, opt for Gentoo. The benchmarks say it's about 5-10x faster than Mandrake, and for that 400MhZ it will preform nicely. Emerge is also kickin' it. You will have to read the installation manual, as there is no "setup," but it is not a hard setup as the instructions are easy to follow.

Slack has it's own package format: TGZ. And any distro running RPM (or Alien) can install rpms. Slack isn't hard, it just makes you learn faster. Hehe

Ok, how do I get Gentoo on a laptop to work... I cannot get Xserver to work right. I would like to try it out.