What distro would you guys recommend for the following situation:
P3 1Ghz / 256MB RAM

The system has a Linksys Wireless-G (WMP54G) NIC on a Wireless G network. On my Netgear card (on another box) I've used the Madwifi Atheros drivers to get the wireless up, but I wanted to find a distro that would work with the WMP54G from the installation. I'd also like the distro to have a decent video and MP3 player built in. I've used FC since FC 2-4 and I've always run into issues with the wireless and/or media playback. Thanks for your input!

Sincerely,
SC

There is no accurate answer to such a question. Try a few distros e.g. Mandriva, Suse, Ubuntu etc and choose the one that you like or the one that you think works best with your system.

You're gonna get a whole host of responses to a question like that and it really is down to personal taste!
Most distros should handle video+audio playback quite happily out of the box, so not sure what problems you were having with FC2-4. What kind of graphics + sound card do you have - that might be part of the problem.

As for wireless, to run the whole install off a wireless card is pretty difficult during the installer as most distros will still require you to configure your wireless adapter manually by loading additional modules. Have a look in the wireless forums for instructions on getting your particular addater going, but most distros aren't going to get that running without any intervention from yourself I'm afraid.

fouldsy:
I don't need to install from the wireless, I was only hoping not to have to spend hours upon hours struggling to find the drivers and correct configuration for that card. The problem with FC2-4 and media is that it didn't come with a MP3 player and nothing played any of my .mpg, .avi, or .mov files by default, so I am looking for a distro that can do that out of the box.
-SC

Didn't play any mp3's, mpg's, etc.? What window manager were using - KDE/Gnome? If you do a default install with a graphical environment a great big wad of media apps. should have been installed. Things like xmms for a start. Get back on what window manager you used. Try to find a menu for multimedia or fire up yum in FC2-4 depending on what's installed at the moment and do a serach for multimedia players. There's loads included as rpm's on the CD's that can be installed for you.

As for the wireless, again, check out the wireless forums and see if someone can point you to a decent howto. FC is probably one of the easiest alongside SuSE for people new to Linux and both generally have pretty good hardware detection (SuSE just in front in my opinion). Generally though, wireless cards can be a pain. Have yuo checked the HCL on this site to see if there's any info on your wireless adapter? Am sure people here can you going without too much hassle, just ask!

I used GNOME is FC3-4. I also did complete installs. The players were there but nothing was associated to any of the aforementioned media files and/or it didn't play them by default.

I'm not that familiar with Gnome, but I'm pretty sure within the gnome control center there is a subsection on file association. It should have set those up by default during the install. KDE does - I've never had a problem with audio + video not being associated with the relevant media player. Maybe someone can point you to the exact location.

Otherwise, try out various different distros until you find something you're comfortable that sets most of your hardware and preferences up for you, but there is really is no easy answer for what to run!

I use PCLinuxOS. It is a LiveCD that will run in 256Mb, and includes an installer. It includes Realplayer integrated into Firefox, and can play just about anything you can chuck at it, with a (some would say too much) choice of players.

Installed, you can use "synaptic" to add "libdvdcss2" (the number at the end changes sometimes) and "libcss" two really tiny downloads, which will enable you to play DVDs with area encryption.

The only problem I've had is that some *.asf files play silent video, not that I've ever managed to get the sound out of them on any other distro!

www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos