I was given a 200mhz (intel mmx) 128meg ram pc with a 4.3 G hd.
I have both slackware 11 and 12, and am wondering which would be better to install on the machine: 11 with 2.4 or 2.6 kernel vs 12 with 2.6 kernel?
Any ideas/opinions?

The primary use is for backup system (email, data, etc).

I tried another distro and even with fluxbox, it was painfully slow.


Thanks.

I'd go with Slack-11 and the 2.4 kernel for ease of setup and stability. I doubt that you'd gain much by using a 2.6 kernel and you'd risk losing functionality since it is not so stable as 2.4.
I think you'll find fluxbox to work okay. If I were you, I'd even try using wmaker. It will probabyl load faster than fluxbox, but may be *very* slightly slower once running. But, for the fractional amount that it is slower, you get a much nicer WM with a GUI config tool.

Thanks gnashley, I will try it right now and report back how it went.

I have two boxes with similar specs happily running with the kernel-huge--2.6.21.5-i486 from Slack 12.
They work as servers but I occasionally use WindowMaker as a GUI for doing administration. This is slow, but adequate to task.

Well, I thought I had 11 on cd
It was on dvd and this machine only has cdrom player.
Any way, I downloaded 11, 1st cd, and got it installed. I am on the machine writing this right now.
Slackware 11 with the 2.4 kernel, X, and for the time being fluxbox, is a lot faster/snapier than what I installed previously.
I already have slackfire and slackpkg installed and running.
Allend, I installed wmaker, but will have to read and study about it before putting it to use. I don't know that much about it, and it did seem confusing to me when I did try.

I think this is going to work great as a backup system..hey, it's working so well, I may spend more time on it

Thanks guys, for your advice.