i have a really junky laptop 222mhz p2, 2 gigs, 32mbram, what would be the best linux version to run

That all depends on what you want to do with it and some of the hardware might not be compatible.

Knoppix runs off cd into ram and has excellent hardware detection. The only problem is with the RAM you have you will only be able to run in text mode. The latest version of Red Hat or Fedora are definetly not going to work because they require at least 64MB to even install.

I would check out either an older version of Red Hat if you don't need the latest or greatest. Slackware or Debian you can install the latest versions and run a lighter window manager. All can be downloaded from http://www.linuxiso.org

i would recomend slackware personally. i installed slack 9.0 on a similiar laptop (166mhz mmx, 64mb ram, 2gb), and ran blackbox with it. it worked great for simple stuff like surfing the web or just editing text documents....what are you planning to do with the laptop? with most distros you should be able to choose the packages you want to install, depending on what you want to do, and there are a number of x managers with small memory footprints (*box, ect).

I've run slackware on my last 3 laptops with moderate to excellent success. Currently Slack is managing my Dell I2650 nicely. I think when it comes to laptops, the question should be "what LAPTOP is best for Linux"

I recently tried Knoppix and was EXTREMELY happy with it's hardware detection as well, but darthtux and basics are right, you probably would be better off going with a "light" install of Slackware and something like blackbox or icewm as your X window manager.

Just for info, I fired up Knoppix on a 32Meg Pentium 90.
Wouldn't recommend it - took over an hour to boot.
But it *DID* run KDE, and I was able to configure the PCI wireless card, and got out on to the web.
Whacked another 32 Meg in it, and it ran much better - only took 15 minutes to boot
Running from disk would be better.
Never did get the mouse working in X, although it looked like it was recognised o.k. - the X11 conf looked good. Didn't worry about it.

Along with those distro's i'd definetly consider trying Arch Linux. Its a bit more aimed at more experienced users (but im not a experienced linux user and I get along fine) but I have a pentium 2 128MB RAM and arch is great on it. Worth checking out.

I have a similar question as above. I am preparing a Toshiba 2100CDS for linux. When it is ready, it will be running a 4.3gig hdd*until I can get another 80gig, if it'll recognize that high*, 160MB ram, and is running an AMD K6-2 400. Any recommendations, suggestions? I'm just getting back into Linux, so I want to start simple. I've heard good things about Slackware and Mandrake, but think I prefer Slackware. Also, I don't have the pcmcia wireless card yet, so I'm using a usb wireless box. Is there support for that, or should I get the pcmcia first?

Mandrake... that's what im using....