Hi all,

I havent had a lot of experience with linux in the past, only used SuSE on occasions. Essentially, I have an old laptop that runs like a dog with anything greater than 98 installed (too old). It has the following specs:

P3 850MHz
128MB SDRAM
20GB HDD

I am looking for advice on choosing a distro that will run fairly quickly on this POS. I was considering SuSE again, until I read the recommended specs (2.4GHz). At this stage, I'm not sure what I want to do with it... possibly use it for monitoring the status of my network/internet connection (active users/transfer rates/bandwith etc).

Can anyone suggest a solution to this problem?
sugar05

XUbuntu or Regular Ubuntu. The Xubuntu will probably run a little faster in GUI mode since its windowmanager is lighter than Gnome.

Xubuntu is a good choice. I think its often times overlooked as a good choice for newbies or those looking for the ease of a gui without needing brand new hardware. Also don't be afraid to check out Fluxbuntu either. Fluxbox isn't a crowd favorite, but it serves it purpose well. Espeically on older hardware (like my POS laptop).

you can run just about any distro you want on that but if you are concerned that your machine won't run some of the more 'top end' distros try looking at some lightweight distros:

Vector Linux 4.3
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

SLAX Live CD
http://www.slax.org/

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/

Elive:
http://www.elivecd.org/

you can find more here

http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributi...Distributions/
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/

hope this Helps,

Jake

You definately want something lightweight. It will have as much to do with the applications you have running, as to which distro you use. Avoid kde and gnome for the desktop environment. Fluxbox is very lightweight and fast and would be a good choice. XFCE is prettier. If you don't need X at all that might be better. Slackware has a good reputation for running on older hardware. Or one of the other ones mentioned above.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I've decided to give Xubuntu a go.

Moved to Linux-Distributions as Linux From Scratch is a distro in it's own right.

Needless to say I have ran a FreeBSD desktop with even lower specs then this. As far as linux I would choose either Zenwalk Linux, Arch Linux or Debian to start with. It isn't going to just be the whole distro which will determine your performance, but also the actual packages you decide to use for a task.