What would be the best distro to install on a 333MHz Celeron laptop w/ 288MB RAM? It needs to be easy to install as I consider myself new to the game, although I have dabbled in Mandrake, Fedora, Xandros and a couple others...

any of those distros you've already tried would work fine...

Yes I have tried them and they work, but they are of course sluggish. I was looking for something to get a little more speed...

usually that's not so much a matter of which distro you choose but instead which window manager or desktop environment your are using... which one did you use when you tried those distros??

I usually use Gnome, that's what I'm used to. I've used KDE also. Just don't know anything about configuring anything else (yet). What would be a good suggestion?

yes, then your issue is very likely the desktop environments you are using... both gnome and kde are quite heavy... on a 333mhz computer i would really consider using a light window manager...

personally, i use fluxbox: http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/

and my parents use XFCE: http://www.xfce.org/

fluxbox is super light and it uses very little system resources... XFCE isn't as light as fluxbox but it's still way much lighter then kde/gnome... my parents use XFCE instead of fluxbox because it's more "comfortable" for them as fluxbox can be kinda weird for non-techie people...

oh, another light window manager is icewm: http://www.icewm.org/

i haven't used icewm in a couple years but i know it's good... it's probably somewhere between fluxbox and xfce as far as "lightness" is concerned...

it sounds like you'd be best served with XFCE or icewm, but you have nothing to loose by giving them all a try before picking one... i think mandrake/mandriva and some of the other distros you've tried include packages for all of these window managers...

Thank you for your suggestions, I will check 'em out...

I am posting this with Mandriva LE2005 and IceWM on the itty-bity 333MHz laptop. Definitely seems a little faster but looks like it'll take some getting used to. Thanks again.

Any one of those distributions would be a good choice. What you want to look at is as stated above the Windows manager. If you are set on KDE and Gnome. I would suggest KDE. Also check out your video drivers.

i guess you missed the OP's latest post?? but that's a very good point about the drivers, though... broggyr, what kinda video chip do you have?? make sure you use an accelerated driver if there's one for it... it'll make a huge difference...

I agree, however my itty-bitty laptop only has a NeoMagic 128 video 'card' - no acceleration there. I was able to successfully try it on my desktop (2nd HD) and got the nVidia drivers installed - big difference!