Hi all, this is basically a question about which distro I should use on my Pentium 100 with a twist.
Here is why: I'm giving my computer to my mother and she doesn't know a thing about computers. I thought of installing Win95 or 98 but it ain't much supported these days and every crapware and virii on the net will clog the computer in no time.

What I want is a good distro with a good window manager easy to use and configure for someone computer clueless and who doesn't need to learn much about linux, in fact it would be nice if the wm could put linux completely (or as much as possible) transparent. I doubt my mother will ever need to use the CLI. Also I would like it the distro to have a good package manager (I hate RPMs!). Optionally (the magic word here is "option") a distro that support french would be nice (I'm thinking of Mandrake here but ... did I mention I hate rpm!).

Hardware:
Pentium 100
40Mb Ram
Matrox MGA 4Mb
3d Blaster Voodoo2
Soundblaster 16
2.5Gb HD
850Mb HD

I checked distrowatch and got a headache. The best distro I can settle on so far is Mandrake (!!). Also I'm thinking of KDE as window manager but it's a bit hungry on ressources which doesn't come aplenty on the PC.

I need your suggestions..

Thanks to all

You'll definiately need to go for a lighter desktop... fluxbox, xfce, or some-such. KDE and GNOME would bog that down to a crawl.

You have slackware listed in the sidebar... Why not that? I'm sure you'll be doing all the work on it, not your mom, so you might as well use something you are used to. You can just set it up to have the major programs in the menu or on the desktop as icons.

One good reason I want an easy distro is that I don't live anywhere near my mother and I don't visit often either.

What will your mother be using the computer for? Web and email only? Word-processing and accounting? Will she need to print, and will she buy a new printer without telling you?

I had to laugh at the Voodoo2 - does she play Quake?
mixtr was fragged by BadMama!

I would say pick an older Mandrake, and find a less demanding window manager than either Gnome or KDE. If your mother knows nothing about computers, she will not have any expectations of the system being like Windows - you can teach her to use a much simpler system and she will probably be happy at how fast it runs

She will use the computer for word-processing (Abiword), go on the web (Firefox), chat with a friend (gaim) and maybe do some accounting (any taker?)

The Voodoo2 WAS state-of-the-art way back then.
And no way in hell my mother could frag me unless she installs the frying-pan-of-death mod
I think solitaire is pretty much the only game she will play.

I haven't explore many wm, once I tried fluxbox I stuck to it. But I would like to find one that has a nice control panel-like interface, that is why I thought of KDE. I see (on the webpage) that xfce seems to have one, is it light enough to support the pc?

I was actually thinking of fluxbox myself, as it is quite simple (at least on the face). Set up her menu with all the programs she will need with easy names ("email", "web", "accounting") and teach her where to click to see the menu - easy! I've not used xfce before, but what settings is your mother likely to want to change? Make sure her speakers have a volume control and give her a nice background image that she will want to look at, and I don't think she will care much about other settings... I set up an XP box for my mother (she wanted to run windows software, and there's no way I was going to try convincing her to mess around with wine) and she hasn't touched the settings once. She is happy with the picture of the tranquil island and I don't see her caring enough to change it in the future

Make sense, but if she is anything like me (and I have to come from somewhere...) she will tire of her color/background and will want to change from time to time.

Although it may take a bit of time, if you're looking to do something nice for your mom then perhaps it would be worth installing several distros on that box, and try each one yourself to see how they work. You certainly would know best what factors would be most important to your mom, and by judging distro A vs B yourself, you'd probably be able to figure out pretty quickly which one would best suit her style and preferences.

That being said, if your RAM is only 40Mg, you will have to keep the window manager pretty minimal. I'll agree with the comments already made, and would second the motion to consider Slackware. It's rock solid and would support your hardware pretty well IMO. Good luck with it either way. Heck, your mom may even turn out to have hidden hacker talents, and maybe this PC will get her interested in the CLI and recompiling the kernel, and pretty soon she'll be coding up a storm and writing her own device drivers -- J.W.

Or maybe fragging me at doom

I've finally decided to settle with slackware. I'm comfortable with the distro. I'm trying xfce right now as I write this message and it seems to fit my needs. It's light, fast and cute. The last point is good for my mom, of course..

Tanks guys

Especially if you used a fat little penguin as the wallpaper image.

Good choice mixtr - Slack rocks and it should work well on that machine. -- J.W.

Well if she has any problems or wants to change any background colors, then just ssh into her box and make any necessary changes.

The Ice Window Manager is real light and I think I've seen
some type of add on to make configuration and theming
easy.

Am I the only one who winced when he was advised to "ssh into her box"?

Did anyone else cringe, or was it just me?

Probably just you, unless you were having foul Oedipus visions dancing in your head :P