I have tryed:
Knoppix (HD install)
Feather (HD install)
Fedora Core 1
and Fedora Core 4

And I finally know what I want:

I want a simple linux distro with a GUI that has:
Low system requerments
Is not a live CD
Is not Damn Small linux

Thats it. My system is:

Dell Latitude CPx
128 megs memory
647 mhz processor
28x CD drive (not CDR/CDRW ect, but I do have other comps that do)

I just need a linux distro that will run good on that... it doesn't need to be chock-full of built-in software, but NDISWRAPPER and a Network Card Config utility would be nice.

Thanks for all replies!!!
A diranged m$ hater

grz

It's not the distro--it's the desktop environment/window manager.
You can use Knoppix, Fedora, whatever, as long as you don't use Gnome or KDE.
I'd recommend XFCE4.

try vector linux, it makes old machines useful again.

I would install Gentoo or FreeBSD.

I recently installed 2005.1 on a Pentium1 MMX 230 Mhz w/ 64 RAM

As it compiles the kernel, it gets optimized. The only problem is that of compilation time. Yours is 3x in speed and 2x in RAM so it would be better with you

I would also think Vector, or Slackware might be good. As aysiu said usually the problem is desktop environment and window manager. So something like XFCE would be really nice for you. If you want to stick with GNOME/KDE, then Debian would be good (Debian also have a number of alternative WMs) . Configuring is also nice with its Debconf system.

E17 (Enlightenment 17) is also a fast WM still in testing stage. But if you can get it work, it is real eye candy.

After one guy said "Windows is much faster" after trying FC4 on several P4-1.7GHz (dual boot with Windows XP) machines, I'm kind of dissapointed about Fedora. And FC4 ran pretty weired on one of my 1GHz Celeron.

Since primo suggested Gentoo, if you can take it, give Gentoo a try. I'm also longing to try Gentoo.

Yeah, I am gonna do that. I gotta wait for it to download, but at least I don't have dial up anymore. Thanks for all your kind help, you guys are just as good as the QBASIC community. Seriously, you guys rule.

Also, if any of you have ever programed in QBASIC, you might wanna check out FreeBASIC (www.freebasic.net). It works just like QBASIC and other BASICs, only it is DOS, Linux and WINDOWS (argh) compatible. It can compile in GUI form in Windows (not sure about linux) and can *compile games for the xbox*!!!

If you can get another 128MB of RAM in that box you will see a big improvement. Swapping to the HD makes things slow down. 650Mhz is plenty fast enough to run Linux. I run BSD on a PII 400 and adding RAM makes all the difference. Make sure that you are using DMA access with the hard drive. hdparm /dev/hda
Try Flubox or similar for a WM.
Rox is a good file mgr but light.
Nedit makes a good light editor, Gedit is a little heavier but good.
Sylpheed is a good light email client.
Dillo is a good fast light web browser, doesn't render every page correctly.
Xmix, Gmix, Aumix make good lighter mixers.
Xnview makes a good light image viewer.
AbiWord makes a good lighter word processor.
Gkrellm, Xcalc, File roller, Xclipboard, Ghex, Gv, Ghostview, Aterm, Xterm, mc, are some more smaller apps you may want. Those are just examples.

This is for FreeBSD but it identifies what the app names are used for. Linux uses the same applications.
http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/

KDE, Gnome and a lack of RAM is probably why you haven't been impressed so far.