hi, my name is XXXXX, and I am a linux Newbie. There, that's done. Now for the deal, I'm running Mandrake 10 on a few computers, I've had Redhat from v6.2 onwards on various machines, I've tried Ubuntu, so I'm not completely stupid as to Linux, but I am having serious difficulties in getting a stable package onto my OLD (as in very old) Celeron 333Mhz Gateway Solo 2500:

support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/Solo_Series/P2500/P2500nv.shtml

I'm running W2K on it at the moment, but I would rather have a fast/stable/GOOD operating system on it instead of the crap that is W2K. All the distros I've tried are too high-end for this system, and all the specifically "low-end"s are, well, not ideal. Anyone with suggestions, I will be most grateful. All I need is decent performance on office-type apps (means a lean xwindows manager), network through PCMCI card (D-Link DFE-690TXD), and maybe decent USB support (viz flash drives). (also it should make wine out of water, but that's probably too idealistic) It's not meant to be a powerhouse machine for me, but with W2K it is tooooooo slow to use effectively. Thanks all

I have a 350mhz desktop machine which is running FC (fedora core) reasonably quickly. It actually is really quick if i don't use kde or gnome. FC3 came with an environment called Xfce, which was minimal but very fast.
The bad news, FC4 doesn't come with it by default.

It can be installed, though. www.xfce.org has binaries, source, etc.

I imagine if you install FC3/FC4 or some other distro from the past year or two will give you the hardware support, then the right desktop environment to give you speed and you should be all set.

Thanks maddogdelta, i will certainly try it. I love KDE, but this labtop can't cope with it at all. Never heard of Xfce, but it looks good. FC4? Seems a bit too recent to be fast enough, but I guess I'm biased by the Windows(tm) credo <spend more, spend more, spend more>. I'll try it out, thanks for the advise.

You might also try DamnSmallLinux. With its loadable "extensions", there's not much it can't actually do, other than specific 2.6.x kernel stuff.

DSL comes w/ fluxbox initially, and there's a bit of a learning curve coming from KDE to fluxbox. It's just a little rough at first, but I really prefer it to KDE.

Vector Linux is supposed to also be good for old machines. It's slackware-based which means solid. Also, since dsl is essentially a stripped-down knoppix with light, fast applications, it will boot and run well on machines where some other distros won't easily. And at it's core it's Debian woody - also very solid.

Will try Vector Linux. It will take a while to download, so i'll post the results when i've got it, monday maybe tuesday (13th-14th). Thanks for the advise!

This suggestion is way out in left field, but it's something I have just found out about (ok, sometimes I'm a little slow)

I was just introduced to xdmc, which is a way of doing remote graphical sessions with a linux/unix box

If the laptop is not going to be moved, then you can get cygwin (www.cygwin.com) with a minimal install (bash and X) then run Xwin -query <ip address or name of computer you are connecting to>
brings up the login screen of the machine you are connecting to.
Lousy for mobility, but where i teach, we have a shortage of expertise/funds to properly give everyone a linux box to work on, so on our "school" hard drives we will be installing cygwin with an automatic connection to a central box with the above command in their .bash_profile.

Of course, if you actually want to be mobile with your laptop, the above suggestion is completely worthless!

Way out in Left field :-) I need the machine primarily for accessing my datafiles while in the field. As a roaming sysadmin i have hundreds of PDFs and other stuff with tech specs, histories, etc. that I need to read while doing onsite repairs... but thanks for the input. I installed Vector Linux this morning, and it's running fine, but super slow (x-windows is crawling). I'm getting rid of various stuff and modifying configs to speed it all up, but if anyone has any suggestions, they are of course most appreciated (and Welcome!!). Oh, I've tried both KDE (bad idea) and Xfce (better idea), both crawl.

Try DamnSmallLinux, beginning install is 50MB

Why not Slackware then, and not install KDE? As WoofDeF says, rock solid. During the install, you can choose what to install, and even more important, what not to install. I have it running a 233/64mb file/web/mail server right, w/3MB '/' drive, 10mb '/var' drive. Works great using xfce as windows frontend