"What if I change distros? Maybe Slackware? What is good lightweight distro that is recommended?"

May not be light weight, but reminded me that SuSE distros were known for good hardware detection and management. Haven't used SuSE much since 9.2 version. But it did keep a failing hard drive running for some time! It comes installed with the KDE interface, but you may be able to change this option during install, has a live CD out as well, so you can try it before installing it. You may be able to install a Light Desktop Environment (LDE)or Gnome instead of KDE, which seems to be less speedy usually.

It may help if you could access another computer either at work, school or public library as an interim measure and stress breaker and do downloads, searches that way. If you are a newbie you are not doing too bad. Online forums are good sometimes, as is typing in exact error messages. I left Ubuntu 10.4 alone (bit unpolished) and went back to Kubuntu 9xx.

Talking about SuSE: Ubuntu took its place pretty much, in terms of usability and hardware recognition. And there is plays a much more important role which kernel you are using, since the drivers are in the kernel, automatically.
Ubuntu exists in KDE flavour: Kubuntu and in the normal Gnome, Ubuntu of course.
For me, SuSE (Novel) has done a pact with the devil by colaborating with Microsoft and turning their back to the community (not minding that Microsoft actually threatened to sue the community for patents that they "say" they hold) It feels to me that the community in term is sidestepping Novell and SuSE and not using it much anymore, which is death to any open source distro. To me, the motivations of Novell are selfish and short sighted. They just want to sell Linux, no matter what, not even caring that they actually harm the whole Linux community by doing so. You can maybe do that if you are a typical megalomanic Company, like MS or Apple that plans to take over the world eventually, but not if you are dependent on a community that fuels your product.
The Linux community is driven by individuals that usually decide and do what is right, not like the commercial world, where companies and individuals usually do what is profitable, conventient or lazy and laugh at ideology. (in the lines of "why bother with a free OS, who cares to pay 80 bucks for an OS?")
In an environment like this, what Novell is doing is pretty much suicide, as users go out of their way to go around them (I know I do)
So far the political talk, this is just my personal opinion.

I would recommend not taking the newest Ubuntu release, if you chose so, as they are always buggy, but I think I mentioned that already.

Markus

Whoa, I should have made it clearer, I was referring to "Open" SuSE who insist you agree to the GPL before installation. I was led to mention SuSE as I believe that they were similar to slackware and I had had experience of SuSE. As I mentioned I last used SuSE in 9.2. The amalgamation with Novell in the next version was one of the reasons I stopped using SuSE. I am aware that KDE is in Ubuntu as I said "I left Ubuntu 10.4 alone (bit unpolished) and went back to Kubuntu 9xx".
I believe the OP was asking about ALTERNATIVES to Ubuntu, hence I mentioned "Open" SuSE. I also stated that 10.4 had some problems as in "I left Ubuntu 10.4 alone (bit unpolished)"

Cheers

[QUOTE=justinp526;4021281]I have everything listed there except for the memory. Though, I did have 1GB RAM.. Dell system killed the other stick of 512MB so I'm now left with only 512MB.

What exactly did it do? Did the RAM chip smoke or char? Dell can be a bit 'closed' about RAM, at one time only Kensington RAM was supposed to work for some of their computers, though I got other brands to work.

Have you tried the RAM in your current setup? Also just for fun try removing and reinserting RAM in the motherboard and changing the order that the RAM chips are in in the banks of RAM, sometimes just a bit of corrosion can make a RAM chip seem nonfunctional. Reinserting it just makes sure it is 'seated' properly and removes a bit of this corrosion.

I have a computer with less specs than yours that run slackware 12.2 with no problems at all. it normally uses from 190 to 230 mb of memory when in use. I very seldom ever see it use any of the swap memory.

(1)it is a pentium 2.2 with 512mb ram 40 gig hard drive.

The second computer is is using mepis 8 and works like a dream.

(2) pentium 4, 2 ghz with 512mb & 40 gig hard drive.

You have plenty of computer system to run the kde 3.5 desktop used in the systems above. The only problem I have ever encountered with low memory (512 mb)is that it takes longer to install.

(a)Use the "top" command in terminal to find what is using up cpu cycles and memory.
(b)use the "smartctl --test=long /dev/hda" command without quotes to check hdd for problems.
(c) next you might "smartctl -a /dev/hda" to look at hdd problems

[QUOTE=mazinoz;4047928]No clue what happened to that stick of RAM. When I got the old Dell system (Dimension 2350) the memory was already in it and worked fine. Then one day I couldn't boot system. Being how it's DDR just like what goes on this AOpen board I figured I could test it on this one. Dell Dimension systems I've read often have faulty motherboards that end up with memory problems.

I'll look it over real good and see if there's any physical damage. Though, I did use a utility disc and tested both sticks of RAM (individually of course) with Memtest86+ and the one stick that doesn't work had some errors.

I'll check it out and report back!

I'm currently running Ubuntu 9.10 but I do have OpenSuSE 11.2 and it does run quite well on this system.. that is from the Live CD. Can't remember if it's Gnome or KDE though..

As far as hdd, I've been starting to wonder if it's starting to fail anyways. In Ubuntu 9.10 I go to System --> Administration --> Disk utility and it used to give me an option to check hdd SMART status. As of recently it now says SMART is not available.

Guess I had better get a new hdd or 2 ASAP as this 40GB Maxtor I'm using now is last one I have left.