What distro to use?
 

I've got an old sony vaio laptop with intell pentieum celleron, 128MB of ram and on board video. What distro would work best with this laptop?

puppy linux, but you should use the search button. This question has been answered a million times

I would say when choosing a distro to choose the one with the best support. Usually the popular ones are the best to choose because if you run into a problem it is easier to fix. I use fedora, but ubuntu has a great following of users that are very supportive of that distro.

I doubt there have been many of these type of questions based on my exact specs.

Possibly not, but there have been many questions about using Linux on older machines, and the answers may be relevant.

I think ubuntu 5.10 is good choice

You are probably going to be unhappy trying to put most modern distros with a GUI interface on a machine with only 128MB of RAM. If I remember correctly, Ubuntu requres 256MB to install the Desktop version. I think you can get away with 128MB if you use the Alternate version, but the last time I verified that was for Ubuntu 6.10.

On the other hand, if you install something like DSL, you might not have the drivers needed to handle your hardware.

The best will be the lighter version of Vector Linux or ZenWalk

I would recommend Zenwalk as well.

I think you should first try a few and testing them, then you can choose the one which supports the majority of your current hardwares...

If you're new to Linux, I recommend using Ubuntu as it's really popular with beginners. For your system, I'd recommend taking a look at the Fluxbuntu project. It's Ubuntu but it comes with more lightweight software installed as default to ease the strain on your computer.

Check it out here: http://www.fluxbuntu.org/

If you're more experienced, you could take a basic network installation of Debian and select your own software to install that would be the most suitable for your machine.

Hope this helps. :)

you can use slackware/debian or an older ubuntu/mandriva/suse/fedora etc.

double post, sorry for my internet connection :)

Debian

try dreamlinux or dynebolic.

debian should work for you, but the best thing would be to try a few different distro's and pick the one you like the most/works best for you.