Wait, Wait, Wait, first off, no one said slackware was a newbie friendly distro. Second off, You do not need a CS degree to do it, you just need to have common sense, and be able to use google.

Who said Linux was meant to compete windows?, it was meant as a unix-like os designed to run on the i386 arch.
I don't understand how the communities aren't generous, considering we are all volunteers on our free time, I would say even answering a small percentage of the questions would be generous

I'll put my in. I have a computer that is 350 MHz and 64 MB of memory. I've successfully run Puppy w/ XFCE on it and it's pretty snappy. Also, I've run Slackware 11 on it, using XFCE and Enlightenment 16 - it wasn't bad at all. I would not expect cutting edge performance, but you will get your work done. Email, Internet, word processing, graphics *somewhat* and a game or three. Not bad.

Does really well sharing a dial up connection too. . .

I understand the limitations of the PII at my disposal, but in general, I was wondering if any of those popular, well-supported distros (e.g. Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu/Xubuntu) or their derivatives could be installed in lighter versions (better suited for my meager 128MB RAM).

To polarbear20000: Xfce looks just fine, but I didn't like the appearance of puppy when viewing its screenshots; it's probably not the primary concern, I know, but not entirely insignificant either.

AFA siawash's suggestion of PCLinuxOS, yes, it might have been good if not for the memory issue (I read it in a review on this site it needs 256MB RAM for the live CD to work ).

I've been trying to check the general hardware requirements on all the distros of interest to me, but they're not always so clearly defined, thus complicating my task. You might suggest I try them out, but I'd rather narrow down the list first. Since the HD is also pathetically small, I'll probably opt out of dual booting altogether. Why keep an error-spouting enfant terrible hogging the precious space better utilized otherwise?

Anyway, I'll take wing again and look for the ideal landing place. Everyone running distros on old boxes are welcome to cast their two cents here as well. Thanks.

With 128 MB RAM the question is not really that much of "which distribution", but "which window manager". Very beginner-friendly distributions like *ubuntus won't let you decide which WM or desktop environment you install (except, with Ubuntu, choosing a different ubuntu flavor). But, with Debian as an example, you can cross the option "install desktop environment" during the installation, which would install Gnome, or leave it out, so that the installation has no desktop environment at all. After that you can do a simple "apt-get install fluxbox" and get Fluxbox, an example of a lightweight WM that will have no problems with 128 MB RAM. (After that it only comes down to what applications you run _in_ the WM.) The less positive thing about lightweight window managers is that they tend to have no graphical way to configure them, which in practice leads to a) flexibility and b) having to read the documentation to be able to use the WM. Which really isn't as bad as it may sound.

Anyway, my suggestion is simply to take a distribution with lightweight window managers in the repository, install the initial system without a WM and then throw one in by hand (such distributions would be e.g. Debian or Arch Linux). The text only installation of basically any available distribution will require much less than 128 MB, and the smallest window managers won't add much to that at all.

If you're planning on doing anything remotely ambitious with older hardware, it's important to get every bit of optimization out of the equipment you have. You can start with something like Ubuntu or Mandriva and then pare away all the stuff you don't want or your computer can't use, but sometimes the effort doesn't seem to pay off.

With older hardware, I've either opted for a Slackware or Debian derivative that targets older hardware and uses a "lighter" window manager (Zenwalk or AntiX, for example), or started with Debian/Slackware/Arch/Gentoo and then built my system up from the command line with just the stuff I want.

If you're a less experienced user, I'd go with the Slackware/Debian derivatives first. Those source distros tend to be pretty quick and the the better derivatives do a good job of configuring your system out of the box. I personally have used and like Zenwalk (XFCE - Slackware), AntiX (Fluxbox - Mepis/Debian), and TinyME (PCLOS).

BUT, with the help of a good installation guide and enough patience, there's no reason why you couldn't run Debian or Slackware proper.

Chris

I'm only in the first stages of learning the Linux ropes, so I wouldn't try to mess with the system on my own . Even so, I will (as necessitated by the hardware) try the different apps available out to the extent that I find the most suitable components. On one hand, I'm willing to roam around, while on the other hand, I'd happily install a distro with a decent array of apps for my liking (as described in my first post) and not have to worry about the details.

Right now, I'm leaning toward Xubuntu. We'll see how that will fly.

I once installed Xubuntu on a P400 MHz with 256 MB RAM and was surprised how slow it was. Booting up took several minutes, launching a console maybe around 15 seconds. I don't know if it was only Xfce that was so slow or the rest of the Xubuntu installation, but I think it was all the stuff that is loaded automatically on startup on *ubuntu systems. As they're very beginner oriented distributions, they tend to start all daemons and applications that someone could possibly need on the background, much one-size-fits-all style, and I think that's what made the system run so slow. (Probably that's also why they started the Fluxbuntu project in order to have an even leaner Ubuntu.)

Ubuntus are great distributions and they make everything rather easy for beginners (maybe even too easy), and you can try Xubuntu and see how it works for you, but having a backup plan might also be a good idea. (Something like Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, VectorLinux...)

Xubuntu I've read loads a lot of GTK libraries, which make it slower than a bare bones xfce install. On a PIII 733 MHz with 160mb ram, I actually found Xubuntu and Ubuntu to be very similar in speed (and both were very quick). I'd try out Xubuntu on a PII, but I'd run a speed comparison with something like Damn Small to see what kind of speed that thing could really put out. You may find Xubuntu to be much slower.

The fastest responding combination I have on that PIII is Arch with Windowmaker. If you're willing to put in a little more time, using a distro that installs a base system, and adding your own lightweight components and window manager will be really worthwhile.

Actually, if one wants to load Ubuntu onto an older PC, I would recommend getting the server edition and picking & choosing the packages you want. That way, one has control on what gets installed on their PC.