I'm currently using an old, piece of junk computer, i586 75MHz, 24MB RAM, 128MB swap, and about 400MB on my Linux partition (I dual boot with Windows).

I'm currently running DSL, and am relatively happy with it, but find the .dsl extensions difficult to use for software. Also, it is very slow. Some of the programs are okay, but for things like word processing it's less than ideal. Ted is limited, and AbiWord runs really slow. Open office won't even start.

I've heard that Puppy Linux has greater functionality and is easier to use than DSL, but on their website it reccomended high amounts of ram which I definitely don't have.

So, to all you experts out there, which do you reccomend? I'm not looking to do any software programming, I'm more looking to have a workstation with basic functionality for word processing, web browsing, PDF viewing, etc. I know there's not much hope based on my hardware, but what would you smart people reccomend?

Would there be any point in trying to run JWM on slackware, or would that just get complicated?

Thanks all!

Hello jmite.

If you have only 24MB of RAM, i would suggest you stay with DSL. Puppy, if I remember correctly, requires a minimum of 64MB to even start. JWM on Slackware might work, but I have never tried it.

If you decide to use Slackware or Debian, I would recommend using IceWM instead of JWM. IceWM is more functional and consumes less RAM. And it's easier to configure. And...well, I can't think of a single way in which JWM is better than IceWM.