Which Distro will work for me?

I have an old toshiba laptop, with 200mhz cpu, 32mb ram, 2 gig harddrive. I am somewhat new to linux, and am having one hell of a time trying to find a distro that will actually install on this laptop. I have tried to install redhat 7, 8, and 9, suse 9.1 personal, smoothwall, damn small linux, elx. Whenever I try to install, it hangs or gives me an error when its trying to start the installer. I have been able to get live cds like knoppix std to work, but not the regular knoppix, and i really dont want to have to boot off a cd everytime. If anyone knows of a distro that works well with old school hardware, or is just an old version, i would appreciate it. Or maybe some trick to getting the ones i metioned before to work would be great. I have tried different boot options, but they dont seem to help much. Any advice is much appreciated.

take a look here
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/topic-19023.html
I really doubt that anything with that little ram will work. CPU and hard drive are fine.

BeatrIX claims to be very compatible with older, lower RAM machines. I'd try out their live cd and see how it runs on your Toshiba. If it runs satisfactorily you can then install it which is pretty easy. I've been checking out BeatrIX for a few weeks now and am very impressed with it.

thanks dapper dan, there are so many distros out there to go through, i appreciate you being so direct.

I think Debian (at least the old installer) and maybe Slackware should be able to install on that, though you might have to practice some voodoo. I'd think Vector should install smoothly, but I really can't say for sure. I seem to recall hearing success stories from people with lesser specs.

I'd also second Beatrix, but I'm really not sure how well Gnome will do on there.

Good point about the Gnome DE Ethyriel. I've been able to get IceWM running without problems on BeatrIX. That would be a much faster and more resource friendly environment for campbell_000's Toshiba. I haven't tried it but it might be worth trying FluxBox as well.

How would I go about using fluxbox, or icewm with beatrix?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by campbell_000

How would I go about using fluxbox, or icewm with beatrix?

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it has apt so

Code:

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apt-get update
apt-get install fluxbox icewm

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If you're wanting to use IceWM after a successful installation, you'll also want to apt-get icepref and icemc to configure it. You may also want to install "synaptic," a nice front end for apt. icewm-themes will give you a lot of choices to get the right look you want too.

Code:

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apt-get update
apt-get install synaptic icemc icepref icewm-themes

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Thanks for all the advice, I am going to get my hands on BeatrIX and try it out.