Hello Linux community. I am a die-hard Mac user who's making the jump to Linux. Not abandoning OS X and the OpenBSD, just expanding my skill set.

I'm going to be installing Linux to dual-boot with Windows XP, the problem I need some recommendations for is the laptop.

It's a turn of the last century Dell Latitude CPi, with an Intel 300MHz (I believe) processor and only 128MB of RAM. I can upgrade the RAM, but am not going to spend money for a new processor, the point of this laptop was dirty cheap.

Is there a distro that would serve me better than others with such limited resources? The online research and surveys I've taken seem to point to OpenSUSE 10, but I'm all ears to any suggestions. Not really afraid of the command line, but definitely haven't been using it for long, so that factors in.

Thank you for your input, I look forward to hearing what other users have to say.

Personally I'd use slackware or debian and use something like fluxbox as a WM on a old computer.

I have a similar latop (thinkpad 770x) PII-300, 128MB. I'm using Slackware (currently 10.1) and Window Maker. The choice of distro probably won't affect performance all that much. The main factor in determining usability will be your wm/desktop env. I wouldn't recommend KDE or Gnome.

Your idea of a VERY old laptop and mine are totally different!

i agree with the slackware choice. It seems to run very well on slower computers. I also suggest that you look at vectorlinux. Both of these can be found at distrowatch.

I will add to the Slackware suggestions. I have 3 Linux boxes at home, a 1.5GHz running SuSe 10, a 1Ghz running FC4, and a 266Mhz with 128MB of RAM Running Slackware 10.2. Honestly, the Slackware machine runs great with KDE, and for day to day stuff, I don't notice that much difference between it and the faster machines.

Thank you all for the suggestions. I wouldn't have even known about Slackware if it hadn't been mentioned here. I'll look at it very seriously and have probably narrowed my choices to either Slackware or SuSe. Ubuntu looks nice with an appealing GUI, but I need something lean that will run on the limited resources my laptop has.

One more question on this matter. The station I'm going to be upgrading to Linux only has a 6GB hard drive. 20-40 GB drives are dirt cheap -- should I go ahead and upgrade to a larger drive before I bring Linux into the mix?

Depends what you want to install. A full install of Slackware is about 3GB (though it's unlikely you'd need a full install), though you can get a very minimal install in under 100MB (but that is VERY minimal). If you're going to install a lot of stuff or keep a lot of data on it, then a bigger drive is a good idea. 6gb can disappear very quickly these days.

I had a feeling that was the case. I'm going to be using the machine in Windows primarily for web testing (IE stylesheet compliance in Explorer, and possibly ASP.NET for grins.) It's hard telling what I'll be doing with Linux, but I can already see 6GB going up in smoke.

I really think I might have known the answer to that question, but asking meant all of my bases were covered.

Thanks!

My friends has such an old laptop, 64+32 megs of ram and an intel p2 i beleive, opensuse 10.0 work on it and he even uses KDE. It works alrite, and is useable, but fluxbox would go down very well on it

I put Vector Linux on an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CS with a 4G hard drive and 24M of memory. It works well if a bit slow.