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I have a CD drive (no DVD) 384 MB RAM.
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It will make life easier for you if you get a distro that comes on CD(s) and not on a DVD. I wouldn't try to ftp something off the 'net, but buy a set of disk from a cheap disk emporium or get them 'free' with a magazine (but remember - most of the things that come with magazines are DVDs and that's not what you want).
It'll will probably take you a few tries at installation before you are truly comfortable with it, so investing the few $/£/ other currency in it will be worthwhile.
The exact best organisation for supplying you with Linux CDs depends on your geographical location, so i have no immediate advice on that.
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My processor is a Celeron 650 Mhz (I think)
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That's fine. Not fire-breathing by any means, but workable.
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My hard drives is small I think a 6.2 Gig and a 2.0 gig.
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A 2 gig must really be ancient. Consider ripping out and donating to a museum :-) (Although note that I'm poor at taking my own advice - I've still got a 1.2 G around here somewhere.)
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I was thinking about adding a 40 gig external then I can use perhaps one of the smaller HD for my Linux OS. Mostly use some office applications and using the internet.
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Unless having a 40 G external one has other uses for you (maybe backing up other computers), consider pulling out the 2 G one and fitting the 40 G internally. Alternatively, if you buy a DIY external USB drive box, you could fit the 40 G to it (first task - backing up existing data) and later go on to use that same box to fit an external DVD writer to. Actually, these days its even a bit difficult to buy drives as small as 40 G, and you might find that 80 G is the smallest that is locally economically available.
If you do do anything with USB, I'd guess that a computer of this age will only have an early version of the USB interface (works with later USB devices but not at the speed of the later USB devices) and you may well be limited in number of USB interfaces.
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Thanks for suggestions on the Linux version that would work best for my older PC
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Err, I've actually got a lower spec laptop than this with OpenSuSE/KDE on it, and it works fine. Performance is a bit gradual, but it does the job (and SuSE and Fedora have been mentioned as the two 'least likely to', although SuSE isn't as bad as it once was, with the exception of the install, which is mega-tedious.)
Firstly, you'll find the 'big hitters' in the GUI world, KDE and Gnome to be the slowest of the user interfaces. You may find them tolerable, or you may not, but I'd say you want at least the option of a smaller, faster-on-its feet UI (say XFCE).
Secondly, the big Office Suite on Linux, OpenOffice, is a bit of a resource hog. For light home use there are smaller adequate alternatives, but if you need the best MS Office compatibilty, you probably need OO. Do try Gnumeric (WP) and abiword (spreadsheet) though; they are lighter.
Right; having done all that boxing you in (CD, GUI, office apps), I'd say anything that fits the bill on those will do the job. Some things will be easier and some things will be better supported than others.
Anything specifically designed to fit on a business card CD or a USB drive, won't have the bigger bloated apps (they just won't fit!), so anything of that form will be a good thing to try. DSL and Puppy have both been mentioned already and I'd have to say that you should try at least one of those. I'd go for DSL, but that is very much a preference thing as there are similarities.
Out of the bigger distros, I think I'd give the Ubuntu family a go. I point out family because Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu are the Gnome/KDE/XFCE versions of the basic Ubuntu distribution. If you install, say Ubuntu, you can just add XFCE if that's what you want to do, and then have the choice between XFCE and Gnome (and maybe then add kde as well). But this makes the assumption that you download a lot of 'stuff' if you want to do this via the net, and you may not be in that situation.
Whatever got said elsewhere, I don't see slackware as being a good choice for 'my first distro' unless you have a history of liking the command line. In independent testing, I've seen slackware post results that are actually slower than some of the distro's more reputed for bloat, which I don't understand, but I wouldn't regard the minute differences in benchmarking as relevant to day-to-day use. I just wouldn't expect it to be a whole lot faster either.
In your current situation, I'd also see an advantage in plugging in a 'live CD'; you can have a play around without the risk of breaking anything, and you'll have a better idea of what you want and don't want at the end of it, and so you'll be better placed to make an informed choice when you've done it. The Live CDs do tend to be noticeably slower, but provided that you factor that in to your evaluation it isn't a problem (some will copy themselves into ram - which is fine and speedy if you don't run out of ram, but isn't if you do).
You might also want to have at look at Distro Chooser at
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
which will ask some questions and come up with a recommendation.
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