help on selecting a lightweight linux OS - old pc
 

hello everyone
I just got a pc that is quite old (pentium 2, 128Mb ram) and I know that win-xp will run really slow on it :cool:, so I am looking for a lightweight linux OS.
This linux OS has to be suitable for kids because my 9-year old niece will use it.
I know a couple of lightweight linux OS but is there one that is designed specifically for kids? one that will have educational and entertaintment games so she can spend her free time

thanks

This might be what you're looking for.

http://edubuntu.org/

There may be others, too....

slackware-12

http://www.puppylinux.org/

There is another one like that but I forget its name.

any linux will work just fine on that hardware, what you need is a light weight GUI. so avoid KDE or Gnome as both will run like a$$ on a system with only 128M ram.

edubuntu will run with gnome thus will not be a good option. i would suggest Debian stable and add the education package, there are plenty of kid games that will run on a light GUI like flux or ice.

This idea depends on whether you fancy programming anything.
Start with a minimal desktop, e.g. xfce, (Xubuntu has it) http://www.xubuntu.org
then play with Perl and download Perl-Tk. I've found Perl-Tk to be a remarkably easy way to do GUI programs, and you might be able to design your own educational stuff.

Oh, and for sheer dazzle, you might like the xlife "game" which is an implementation of John Horton Conway's brilliant cellular automaton. Those glider guns and spaceships go like bats out of hell in extraordinarily "underpowered" machines.
http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/xlife.html

Oh, there's another thing you might do.
I've found machines in Goodwill, and even in a dumpster (!), that had 128 MB PC100 RAM cards still functioning. If your pentium 2 machine will take another such card, you'd have a little more power.

thanks for all the suggestions guys.. i will take a look at all the links you gave me and see which OS works best for my niece.
thank you