ive been looking for a small type of linux or an older one that isnt so big .i have asked a few questions around here on the small linux's .damn small linux,feather linux,and puppy linux ,i dont really like those that much ,so is there a different linux i could use maby red hat or an older version of mandrake,i only have a1.5 gig drive ,its an older laptop and it doesnt boot from the cd so ill need a boot disk to get it to boot from the cd , i have been useing mandrivia and suse on my desktops (im still a newbee)if this helps...anyways id really could use some tips..thanks

might i suggest debian woody or freebsd? both light, compact, and fast (though they aren't really the friendliest unixes). Woody is a bit dated but it ran nicely on my p233mhz, 32mb ram laptop. The hard drive was under 2gb and i had enough space.

freebsd is technically not linux, but it seems to run quite well on older hardware as well. Their site claims that it will run with 8-16 MB ram.

however, neither of these is terribly user-friendly, especially during the install. You will just have to deal with this, as your laptop is probably not capable of (comfortably) running any recent distro/ kernel. In any case, as a newbie, it would definitely be wise to become at least aquainted with the command line, if not somewhat proficient, since it could save you frustration in the long run (for instance, if your laptop video chipset is not autodetected, not an uncommon problem with older distros / chipsets, you will have to go in and edit your X86Config-4 file by hand via command line).

I would suggest debian woody, and if that doesn't do it for you, i would give freebsd a try.

the newest versions of slackware and debian would do fine if you stayed away from kde and gnome. fluxbox, xfce or something else lightweight would be a better idea..
again.. not very friendly.. but good to learn from.

it's not the best idea to run old versions of distros on older hardware. running something new, but lightweight is much nicer.

thanks for your help ,now when i make my start up floppy do i just use the terminal on my mandrivia to make the floppy...thanks again,i think im going to go for slackware