What linux distribution is the best for an HP Laptop about 8 years old?
 

ALL,

I have an old HP Laptop zv5360 with the 60gig drive. What is the best version of linux to put on there? So far I have put on Ubuntu and Fedora. Hands down Ubuntu is better.

Sounds like you have your answer - ubuntu. Most any distro should work on that spec laptop, though with the limited RAM, you may want to use an alternative desktop like XFCE, LXDE, or Enlightenment (instead of KDE or Gnome). Also, watch the applications you choose to use. Things like Abiword and Gnumeric will be lighter on resources than Openoffice/Libreoffice. You may want to try Chromium, opera or midori if Firefox feels sluggish.

Here is a list of lightweight apps that the Arch project keeps up.

If your system doesn't have much RAM then Ubuntu may be getting a bit much for it, and Fedora would be in the same boat as far as RAM is concerned.

My Acer laptop is about 9 years old and I run Ubuntu for nearly 4 years. Each successive version of Ubuntu just made it slower and slower (not as slow as XP though). Then I switched to Debian and all of a sudden my little old Acer was fast again.

#! (read as 'Crunchbang') Linux is fantastic for old/moderate hardware.

I obtained some old laptops that were being thrown away (had Windows installed making the system especially sluggish). I first tried Ubuntu (my main distro), but after being spoiled by Ubuntu on very modern hardware this laptop just felt too slow for me. I installed #! and the hardware immediately felt 5 years newer.

#! is based on Debian so you have plenty of software available (used to be Ubuntu based), and there are 2 versions, one with Openbox as the WM, and the other with XFCE. Of course you can have both WM installed (or any others you want for that matter) and switch between them freely if you so choose. I use the Openbox version, and when booted up the OS uses only about 50Mb of RAM.

http://crunchbanglinux.org/