Minimum system requirements
 

I've recently decided that I'd like a laptop computer. I plan on purchasing a PIII at somewhere around 800mhz, 128mb RAM, and a 15gb HD. Will this run Ubuntu effectively? If not, what might be a good distro to try? All I need this computer for is web browsing, word processing, coding and compiling.

/Vital

It'll run just fine.
Just make sure you do the following:
enable extra repositories
log out
Click on Session and select XFCE
Log in

Hi!

I run Ubuntu on a 600 MHz desktop PC with 192 MB RAM and it is pretty good - not a speedy, but far away from being a snail. :-)
Of course, it will be faster if you install XFCE, as aysiu wrote above. (I didn't, 'cos I have dial-up at home...)

Greetings!

Thanks for the help everyone. When I enable the extra repositories and xubuntu, what does that do? It makes it faster for slower computer, but why?

/vital_101

You enable extra repositories in order to get Xubuntu (Xubuntu isn't in the ordinary repositories). Xubuntu includes the XFCE desktop environment, which is a lot faster than Gnome or KDE (the desktop environments for Ubuntu and Kubuntu, respectively).

yeah, i have a Toshiba satellite pro 4200... 500mhz, 15gig hard drive and like 350megs of ram... i'm thinking of putting xubuntu on it. do yall think that it will run good? or do you think another distro like vector linux is a better choice?

You could simply install Xubuntu instead of installing Ubuntu and THEN Xubuntu.