My Mom is not interested in what she calls a "idiot box".

If she was. I'd be a good son and upgrade that unit. You will just be a disappointment to her installing Linux on something she will just struggle with and give up. Just because you are giving her a GEEK learner cli unit.

Not knowing your location or financial situation. I cannot say how feasible this option is for you.
So I gotta go with snowpine and s.verma on this one.

P.S. I run some pretty old gear myself so I speak from experience. Edit: darry1966 also has a good post also.

Raspberry pi 39$, memory card 5$, power 5$, NOOBS for Pi is free.

If you want to get real fancy, get a wireless keyboard and mouse 10$.

And then she will abandon it because there is no Flashplayer for ARM? Or do I miss something here?

---------- Post added 4th Mar 2014 at 20:46 ----------

You have to update your knowledge. All of these distributions are doing that by design, no extra options are needed. EDIT: Some time ago I have made a comparison between Salix with Openbox and standard Tinycore, you may want to have a look at that: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post4711196 and http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post4712345

You forgot monitor, keyboard and mouse szboardstretcher.

Just kidding around now.

This is about as low as I could go and still watch youtube (outside of my browser) using something like GTK-YoutubeViewer.
Browser had to be closed though.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5/#post5067529

PS. That is a full install, not a frugal which means it does not load/boot to ram but to hard drive instead

That was my ram usage while using either Seamonkey or Firefox while posting. I can't remember which since I suffer from CRS.

I would not even think of giving that to my Mom. If she had a Interest. I would score good son points by giving her my Compaq CQ57.

Referring
http://www.puppylinux.com/developmen...uppyworks.html

See Heading "The rationale for puppy2", point no. 3, it says
"Works on PCs with very little RAM, probably as little as 32M."

Further
See heading "3. Works on PCs with very little RAM"

It tells that if you have got low amount of RAM (as little as 32 Megabytes, ref. "The rationale for puppy2", point no. 3), then it doesn't load anything except kernel and working files (which are required).

Ref. last two paragraphs, Heading "3.Works on PCs with very little RAM"

If your computer has 128 M or more RAM only then it preloades.

Hence, dear TobiSGD, You are really right. Puppy Linux defaults to copy to ram.
But it can be turned off for even 128 M or higher RAM system by providing

pfix=nocopy as kernel option
(Ref. http://puppylinux.org/wikka/BootParametersPuppy)

Hence Puppy Linux can be easily used for low RAM systems.

You might want to check the date on that document. It is from 2006 and meant for Puppy version 2.
Puppy is meant to being run from RAM. That is a key point of its design. I can't see any advantages in using Puppy when not running it from RAM, compared to running regular all-purpose distributions or distributions especially aimed at older computers, like antiX. You will get easier updates and a much larger software base with those distributions.

That is why I started with using Puppy Linux as transition from Windows XP to Linux, and soon switched to Debian.

Depends on puppy: check Wary. Or even Barebones.
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/MinimumSystemRequirements
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Barebones

As for someone that has been running Lucid Puppy full install for a couple of years, I recommend
NOT to use full install. SFS-packages don't "sit" into full install and they are much more numerous than PETs. Use frugal install. Also, with older processors (like mine was) watch out: Flashplayer requires SSE2 instructions by default. My processor didn't support it, and I didn't have disk space and time to compile everything.

The support on the puppy forums was outstanding, though.
(Probably that's why I still have puppy on a memory stick as a "pocket Linux".)

From my experience, an LXDE install of Debian has been much faster than an install of puppy on a 128mb Laptop (and would be much more easy for a newcomer to user). On That laptop I can run LibreOffice and Iceweasel (i.e. Firefox) just fine though the initial startup of those programs can take up to 40 seconds, and those two programs don't work well when they are both running at the same time (however it is still reasonably usable). I've never tried to run Flash though...

I imagine the OP has made his choice by now, but here are some figures for small distros idling (all Debian based):
AntiX (Icewm): 69 tasks running in 60MB
WattOS (LXDE): 91 in 80
CrunchBang (Openbox): 84 in 110