LinuxMint-9-lxde would be my preference for the P4. A lightweight Slackware-based distro for the older one is a good choice, too.

Personally, I dislike Knoppix -- try it later, when you are somewhat more traveled along the learning curve of linux!

'buntus have done nothing but cause me problems since the new LTS. Hence, I stay away from them, too.

Take what you need and leave the rest. Knowing what you need is the trick.

For the old computer, you can probably find the configuration using google.

The CPU is unlikely to be a problem. I've seen Ubuntu running (a bit sedately) on a 600MHz machine, and the specialised light-weight distros will cope with 166MHz.

Memory is more of a problem. Few mainstream distros will be happy with much less than 512MB. With 128 you can run Absolute or Puppy; with 64 you can run Vector Light, complete with GUI!

i used to have a 100 mhz pentium with like 64 megs of ram functioning as an nfs/dhcp/nis server running redhat 7.2 for the longest time, however don't expect any repositorys for some of the old distributions to still be available.

ok mint and slackware
i 'm gonna look
,right version from distrowatch thanks again
this title teach me lots of thinks about linux

i've got one more question
which desktop i mean gnome xfce and which version of mint?

Go to http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06194 and look for linuxmint-9-lxde-cd-i386.iso

Also, you may wish to go to http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dis...=all&year=2010and look for absolute-13.1.2.iso

Remember these are only recommendations you do not have to use them. Personally I have Slackware 13.0 fully upgraded using kde 4 on a Dell Dimension 3000 desktop with little problems or sluggishness. The machine Specs are a 2.8 ghz P4, 1 gig pc3200 sdram, 40 gig hd, dvd rom, cd burner. A lot has to do with what you wish to use it for as well.

I use mine as a music center for guitar and use hydrogen for a drum machine. Yes the Intel integrated graphics gave me a bit of trouble but I solved that and it has been running ever since just fine.