Virtualization Project; Looking for recommendations!

Hey everybody,

I'm fairly computer savvy, but a relative newcomer to Linux. I'm running Mint 7 on my backup machine, and the biggest pain-in-the-*** I've had to deal with so far is getting the wireless drivers working (admittedly not that tough with Mint).
Anyhow, I have an idea for a little project but I could use some help getting off the ground.

I'd like to set up a bare-bones system to play host to various VirtualBox machines and appliances. A simple GUI like fluxbox or openbox would be acceptable, though I'd prefer to use/learn a text-based interface.

Because this will only be a host system, I'd imagine it wouldn't need anything fancy, just hardware support and VirtualBox. This is the system it would be installed on:

~2005 Dell Precision M70 laptop
~320GB 5400 PATA HDD
~1GB RAM
~Broadcom Wireless card (Gasp!)
~not sure what else might be important...

Basically I'll need USB, keyboard, touchpad, DVD-ROM, and wireless working. Maybe bluetooth eventually, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I've been looking for a distro that fits these parameters but came up short. Any suggestions?

Any and all input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Not a bad idea, but you probably want to add some RAM - at least have at least 2GB, and allocate at least 1GB to a running VM - I am assuming you are only going to run one VM at a time. If more, then more RAM would be appropriate in order to get decent performance.

I'd consider Ubuntu server considering your experience since Mint is based on Ubuntu.

Thanks for the tips, guys! I'll post back on this when i actually have time to build the dang thing.