No doubt this is the most annoying question asked on this board, but I hope that in between the flames someone will hook me with a good suggestion.

I've got a box with a P3 800 mhz proc, 512mb of slow ram, and about 4 hard-drives 20 mb and under.

What I want is:

- something really easy to config
- to run http, ftp, sshd, php, mysql
- to easily set up samba so my win boxes can share the FS
- to be able to play mp3s immediately after installation
- to do some light, stable web browsing

Thanks in advance, ladies and gentlemen.

FB

Your harddrives, do you mean 20GB and under? 80 mb isnt very much...

Sorry about that, archdev.

My hard drives are:

12gb
?gb
20gb
20gb

I would not call that a "SLOW" box. Try something like Ubuntu or XandrOS (Google 'em).They come with quite a few apps and you can easly ge more with there packag managers.
Hope that helps!

I don't necessarily think my 800 mhz proc is 'slow', but i'm running in with 512mb of PC100 ram. I worry that this may be causing some instability with the box.

Download and try out as many different distros as you can. You'll find one you like.

www.distrowatch.com

Although your rig may not be bleeding edge, it has enough horsepower that pretty much any distro will run just fine. You can also check the LQ ISO site and LinuxISO, both of which offer many of the most popular distros for free download. Good luck with it. The only way to decide which distro is best for you is to try several, then make up your own mind as to which one best fits your needs and preferences -- J.W.