Which linux distro has the fastest boot time but,
would already come with:

-some desktop environment (e.g., gnome, kde, etc... (no preference))
-wireless/internet support (currently dell inspiron 1525, using Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card)
-plays sound/video (e.g., if I download VLC player or something else)

I would recommend Fedora, which I am using on my 9 year old PC. You can download it with any GUI, either the default Gnome, or any other. Note that KDE runs generally a bit slower. Slackware will boot probably even faster, but if you are new to Linux I would not recommend it. You could also try Damn Small Linux, although I found it myself rather limited...
Try doing the test at http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/in...firsttime=true and see what distro the program will recommend you...

A word of caution. Check what chipset your wireless is using.

If it's a Dell, the wireless is likely a Broadcom chip. They take a little more to get working than most other chips, though Broadcom has now made drivers available to the community.

You might want to look at Ubuntu Netbook edition for a lightweight distro.

It's basically standard Ubuntu with a number of programs removed (for example, the database program is not included in the office package). Although it defaults to the Unity desktop, it includes Gnome (at least as of the last release) and you can install another window manager of your choosing if you wish (I use Fluxbox). It also has the Broadcom drivers readily available in the repos.

My personal favorite is Slitaz which boots in about 20 seconds on my 800mhz machine and had no trouble detecting the wireless. No gloss, no glow and very basic. I'd suggest you try a few system. Download and burn a few CDs and try them or just boot the iso images from VirtualBox or other virtual software.

I would suggest Zenwalk. http://zenwalk.org/
Zenwalk comes with XFCE and has all multimedia codecs installed out of the box. Zenwalk is also very light and fast.
If your computer does indeed have a Broadcom wireless chip, then you can likely get it working with Zenwalk:
http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?ti...bcm43xx_native
and with ndiswrapper:
http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?ti...xx_ndiswrapper

burning cd's can get expensive Just a suggestion if your bios supports it install the iso on a flash drive and boot from flash drive. Just a second option but I would follow this post. Everyone can recommend you one but the best distro is the one that best fits you

A useful USB tool for making usb boot drives:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/univers...easy-as-1-2-3/

Regards

J

My choice is Debian.

Debian is fully configurable.
As per our choice and preference, we can install any desktop system.

My personal fav is XFCE. It is light weight and still easy to use.

LXDE is also good.

Pick the one you like the sound of and if it is too fat; trim it and if it does not have all that you want; add to it.

Set your mind to it you can make the most bloated skinny by watching what is selected on installation. And some of the smallest you can bloat by the time you get out of a repository.

Mine will boot in about 5 seconds if I am not watching or waiting on it, but if I am then it seems to take a hour.

I'm going with Porteus stable or beta, which is based off Slackware -current and is in many ways a "new" iteration of Slax
It is for portability, not as a traditional HDD install, but it has persistence, etc and newest kernels too
http://porteus.org/

Slackware doesn't boot so fast, but it is the fastest distro after boot from the ones I've tried, which are Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, Debian and FreeBSD (not really a Linux distro, but still). As to making the boot faster, you could use what is recommended here and also install wicd from /extra so that you don't waste time being assigned an IP.

If you really want it to be fast, don't pick a DE. Use something like Fluxbox. Takes a little configuring, but the results are very pleasant.

Xpud may be one of the fastest. Not exactly a desktop but a usable menu.

I'd look to slitaz also. Pretty fast.

Tiny Core is not bad either if you want to start real small with gui.

AntiX is also a pretty good choice, lightweight, very customizable, on my laptop boots up pretty quick (have never timed it, though I have seen others report boot times as low as 5 seconds) and if you're like me and do have the dreaded broadcom chip, M11 worked with it right off the bat (whereas when I started out with 8.5 it took some fiddling with to get it to work right). AntiX gives a few different options to start out with, core (no gui) 118 or so MB download; base (core system with gui, window managers, system configuration apps and a few programs) at around 400MB; and full which gives a good selection of lightweight apps at about 680MB.

Crunchbang is also nice and fairly lightweight, minimalistic styling without having that "windows 3.1" look - customization seems a bit trickier with it though. Love the pre-configured hotkeys for menu and often used programs.

Both are debian based and have conky installed by default, which I love.

Good luck finding what works for you!

Above mentioned plus Absolute linux(after install it flies) and Austrumi linux(this is awesome because it can run only from RAM(if selected) which is as fast as you can get).