Hi

My PC is;
and my preferred softwares are
What distro I should use so that my PC runs smoothly and don't hiccup?
Thanks

puppy or tiny linux

Your main constraint is the hard disk space. Your processor and RAM shouldn't have too much trouble with most distros.

For your software, if you want the official Adober Reader you'll usually have to get that from their website. There are other programs to read PDFs, and most Linux distributions will install one, but they may not support certain features.

Google Chrome (or rather 'Chromium') isn't ready for Linux yet - you can run it, but it's still firmly in alpha and full of bugs. And the Windows version doesn't run on Wine.

Instant messaging can be handled by any of several programs, the most common being Pidgin and Kopete.

Arch Linux will do everything you want, but it's not simple to install. Arch installs almost nothing by default (not even a graphical desktop!) , you have to specifically choose each program you want to install, which is good if you want to save on disc space, but means you have more work to do yourself.

Vector Linux might be a good choice - choose standard if you want more features, or light if you want to use less resources (both should run fine on your hardware). However, I'm not sure if it has all the software you want.

cantab!
Thanks a lot for such a detailed answer
Does the kernel in the latest version of any distro (like vector, arch etc) require more RAM and processor or it does not have much effect on memory?
Thanks

To first order, the usage of RAM and CPU depends on what you are doing. I suppose the larger kernels do use more RAM, but I've never looked in detail.

The fastest system will alwasy be the one with everything minimized/optimized---including compiling a custom kernel.

For your system, the bottleneck is going to be the hard drive---I think you can get a larger one for under $50 US.

I can not change its hard drive because its my office's PC. I thinking about trying vector linux.

Try fedora
u can get all the programs u want by default (google chrome can be installed easily although i recommend mozilla firefox)