Which distro and version to install?

I'd like to put linux on a system with the following specifications:
- Celeron 300a
- 64 mb RAM
- 4 gig HD
- CDROM (32x)
- 2 Network Cards Realtek 3129 and a Sohoware 10/100 Card (both have linux drivers from manufacturers)
- Voodoo 3 2000
- And all the standard equipment (mouse, keyboard, monitor)

And am looking for opinions on which distribution to install, and whether to start with an older version and update the kernel if I need any newer hardware/software(?) support.

I have used unix for a few years now but I have never been satisfied with any install I did on this system and, I would still like to setup X with KDE (if that won't kill a celeron 300).

I've previously had mandrake 8 on this comp but It was quite painful (yes It was sad, I went back to win98 to gain speed back).

So I ask for advice on which distro, version, and any other information I should know to successfully install Linux on this damn old comp

-Aldones

Any distro will work just fine, as you can customize it to your needs. I have Slack 8.0 running smoothly on a Celeron 400, 128 MB RAM, Voodoo 3, with a 100 MB swap file, boots in about 25 seconds and loads Enlightenment in about a second for GUI..

Its just how you install, what you run on it and such..

Take a peek at the threads here as this sort of question is asked all the time. You'll probably find what your looking for.

go for redhat 7.3
it won't be fast in kde3, though

Any distro that is light on the bloat should be good. Redhat, Mandrake, and Suse are most likely a bit to bloated for that system. Go for Slackware. If you're looking for pure speed use Fluxbox as your desktop instead of KDE.

Any version of Slackware will run ok, but KDE will be slow on a 64M box.

Ok, from what I understand you all are saying KDE is a bad idea because it'd use up all my ram and seriously decrease performance.

I simply need something that will provide an easy to use interface, although I've used enlightenment and afterstep, I liked KDE's windows-like interface (yes I like Windows' interface). I'll try fluxbox, but I guess I'm going to have to experiment

I am, however somewhat comfortable with the command line and I'll try slackware. Any other suggestions?

I just put Libranet (Debian Linux) 1.9.1 on a P75 with 16 megs of memory and a 540 meg drive. After a 30 meg swapspace it still has 185 megs free !
Half way through the install it asks to remove the cdrom and boot floppy to reboot. When it restarts it asks for the cd to finish the final install of all the heavy "bloat". I switched terminals and restarted, when it asked for the install CD. And It came back just fine after rebooting. A little fiddling, configuring and setting up Runlevel 5 to start a GUI at boot and It will be fine. It uses icewm for a window manager and has a list of Themes for different styles including fake95. Not much eye candy to look at but its MUCH faster than win 98 . For a lean install you might give it a try.

If u want to play with your box use SuSE or RedHat, if u want a stable working box, install Slackware

i have suse 8 on one computer and red hat 7.3 on the other. i have far less problems with suse 8, red hat 7.3 is not as stable as a home system, thats my 2 cents worth.

i also have read that derbian, a little tougher to get installed, and after one learns how to use the packaging utility, that one will never switch to any other linux system.

My k6 300 laptop runs slack an kde fine (it has 96 MB of ram though)... RH and mdk were painfully slow though...

My K6-2 300 (64MB SDRAM, S3 Virge Vid) runs Slackware 8.1 with KDE just fine (even with an uptime of 3 days or so). I'm very impressed with Slackware and I would suggest it to anybody and everybody.

just get more ram and expand the possibilities, it's cheap i tells ya

definitely slackware with fluxbox