Hey, I'd suggest arch linux if you want speed and ease of configuration, maybe with icewm which looks good with the silverxp theme and is very fast and also easy with iceme and icepref. There's even an ice configuration panel project where they try to make it very easy to configurate everything (like the windows configuration panel). I don't need any such panel because it's very easy to edit some textfiles to set everything up in arch, icewm.

You could also use Gnome or KDE on such a machine ofcourse. But icewm will be much faster. I'd suggest you try out gnome, kde, xfce, icewm, fluxbox, openbox, windowmaker, ratpoison, ... and so on. And see what you like.

If I were you I'd first try out Arch linux, then debian, vector linux, ...
Debian has an advantage because it has automatic made menus for the lighter wm's, and automatic mailcap creation, ... But arch is much cleaner in configuration files and faster (boots double as fast as debian here)

You see there's no real answer for you, just suggestions. And it's up to you to try it

grtz

Thanks for the tip.

As I am going to load up three PC's, was thinking of trying the following:

Slackware, Mepis and Arch.

I was also thinking of trying the new 'myah os' although i'm in two minds as I don't think it comes with a package manager, so might prove to be a little awkward for a newbie such as myself.

Still by installing three or more distro's on different computers should give me a good idea as to what I like and dislike. Then I can give feedback for other newbie's who might be interested in my experiences.

Not that it necessarily would have crossed your mind to SUSE (?), but if anyone else ever reads this with the same problems,

it's robably not best to use SUSE on a Pentium III (still a bit sluggish).

If anyone was thinking of using Fedora, I found Fedora Core 4 to be much better on my old slow machine, if there don't happen to be any sound bugs for your hardware. I would have stuck with Fedora on my Pentium III had it not been for that. You might be ok though.

Hi!

I have a 600MHz Celeron at home with 192 MB RAM and tried few distributions:
- Mandrake 10.0 - find it a bit slow
- SUSE 9.2 - looong booting time, the slowest of what I've tried
- Ubuntu - runs pretty good, maybe I'll put it back when I receive the Breezy CDs. The only problem is that I have analog dial-up connection, so I can't update that much from the web
- Damn Small - rooocks! :-) Nice to see it blasting.
- UHU Linux - that's what I use now. It's a hungarian distribution, based on Debian. Performance is similar to Ubuntu, I can comfortably use Gnome as window manager. And of course, XFCE4 is something really special - the swap file is allmost unused!

Greetings!
Robert

Thanks for the comments.

I have been reading some more reviews and i'm tempted to try 'PClinux OS'. Sounds perfect for the kids as a transision from XP to Linux.

Gonna have to be careful, at this rate I could end up spending 3 months trying out distro's

Still I am getting the computers for free, and it will be a good time to experiment with the various distro's.

Once you begin trying linux distro's you'll be trying out distro's for the rest of your life, in search for a perfect one

Hmm. Ez to install and use...
OK:
1. Mandriva
2. Gentoo has a graphical installer but i do not recommend it for n00bz
3. Ubuntu
4. SuSE
5. LFS

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT use Fedora Core 4. It causes only trouble.

tried mandriva sooo slow!!

I think Gunnix is right though, once i start trying distro's could be doing it forever.

looking forward to trying them though

yeah, as long as you have that 512 of ram, you should be fine with anything.
My Irongate 800mHz has 256 ram has ran slack-current with fluxbox for the last 2 years or so, it still screams.
And my Pentuim MMX with 64 megs runs Freebsd with blackbox just fine, even use dillo for the web now and again haha

My pentium MMX with 64MB ram is running debian testing with the newest opera browser just fine. I barely notice the difference between my 2ghz and my 166mhz because of the light apps I use
(links2 -g is also a great browser )

Did it not pick up your hardware or something?

leeh,

I Love PCLinuxOS use it all the Time. It comes as A live CD that you can install to the HDD. Your computer/s would run it beautifully

D/L it here:

http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/html/download.html

Hope this helps,

Jake

Jake,

Thanks for the info. I have tried downloading the .iso image from one of the mirror sites and it stops at 118mb, but the site states file size at 678mb.

I will try the site you recommend, if that doesnt work will try BitTorrent.

Would you say that the distro is easy to learn and provides everything a kid could want (with the exception of games).

Leeh

Leeh,

Yeah Everything A kid could want, very Graphical nice setup and easy to learn, heck yes you could use it one handed, I know I do, I only Have the use of one hand, extra bonus for me

Anyway I'm sorry to hear that the Distro download isn't working for you, I could send you A copy if you want. I'll just need your postal Address and full name

Jake

Jake,

Thanks for the offer, but I managed to download from a different site last night.

Just need to download the other versions that I intend to try.

Lee