which Distro would be best for our old Averatec Laptop

[Messenger]

I have an Averatec Laptop, the screen was broken so we took it off an hooked it up to a small "E" flat monitor and it works fine. We run the Laptop as a desktop now.
It has Windows XP service pack 3 on it and runs using a DLink wireless adapter.
Our Averatec has a 1.39 GHz processor with 224 MB of Ram and 27.9 Gb of Hard drive.
I burned an ISO CD of Puppy Linux and ran Puppy from the CD. It installed well but when I went to use an online game called Farmville the whole screen froze and I had to turn the computer off to get it going again.
Farmville worked on the computer when it ran XP could it be that Puppy Linux is not the right Distro for my computer or do I need a distro that has Java or flash applications on it and if so where or how can I do this?
I realize that I have asked a lot of questions but I have been searching for the answers for a week on forums.
Thank you for your help
(tired of Microsoft trying to dominate every aspect of my life)

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Zenwalk (slackware based) and Xubuntu (debian based) are a couple of nice, lighter weight distros that you could try on it to see how they work.

Let us know what you end up sticking with and how it goes.

[Messenger]

I checked out Xubuntu but I don't have enough ram according to the Xubuntu page

Minimum system requirements

You need 192 MB RAM to run the Live CD or 128 MB RAM to install. The Alternate Install CD only requires you to have 64 MB RAM at install time.

To install Xubuntu, you need 2.0 GB of free space on your hard disk.

Once installed, Xubuntu can run with starting from 192 (or even just 12 MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 256 MB RAM.
I will check out Zenwalk now

[Messenger]

I tried running Damn Small linux from Cd and it worked until I tried to connect to the Internet. DSL does Not recognize my WIFI D Link USB DWL G 122 Adapter. Weird thing is , Puppy linux recognized and got me on the net but Puppy kept freezing or randomly closing a browsing session.
I am not sure what to do now. I want to exit out of the world of WINDOWS but I don't seem to be having much luck.
Can anyone help me get Puppy going or even DSL. or advise me of a better distro for my limited ram computer.
Thank you.

[devils casper]

Puppy linux recognized and got me on the net but Puppy kept freezing or randomly closing a browsing session.

Which Graphics Card do you have?
Post the output of this

/sbin/lspci | grep -i vga

You must have root privileges to execute lspci command.

[Messenger]

The Graphics card I have is S3 Graphic ProSavage DDR
I am not sure what you meant by"Post the out put of this"?
Thanks so far for your help
How would I go about making a partition, step by step.

[Digital_Resistance]

ran Puppy from the CD. It installed well

You didn't actually install to the hard drive, did you?

Running an OS live (whether from CD or USB flash drive) requires more RAM than installing- to and running- from the hard drive. (And Puppy runs live entirely in RAM )

Therefore, I wonder whether the problem you described,

but when I went to use an online game called Farmville the whole screen froze and I had to turn the computer off to get it going again.

,
might simply have been due to a lack of sufficient RAM?

Was it the SeaMonkey browser that crashed?

When I ran Puppy live from CD on my ten-year-old Dell Latitude C600 (Pentium III @ 850MHZ, 256 MB of RAM), I experienced this strange behavior with SeaMonkey where it would just spontaneously "jump around"-move pages back and forward.

(I suspect this might have been related to the mouse drift --a known hardware issue for this Dell laptop-- that I had experienced with it under Windows 2000 and the cursor jumping while typing that continued under antiX MEPIS, the GNU/Linux distro that I went on to use extensively on this computer.)

could it be that Puppy Linux is not the right Distro for my computer

First, because of the fact that it runs exclusively as root by default, I would advise caution regarding the use of Puppy Linux on any computer with network access (that includes the Internet)

( There is a version designed to address this concern called Multi-User Puppy but I don't know just how practical or effective of a solution it is and I would be particularly hesitant about recommending it to a complete newcomer to GNU/Linux.)

If you are interested in pursuing Puppy further, they have their own forums that you might wish to try at murga-linux[.]com/puppy/ (remove the '[]' ), which seem friendly and helpful.

or do I need a distro that has Java or flash applications

As far as Puppy goes, if I am not mistaken, the Teen Pup puplet (variant) has more of these than the standard version.

But I am far from being a gamer and I actually detest all things Java and Flash, so I'm afraid I can't be of much help in these areas specifically.

I would just like to note two other slim/light distros that are especially suited for older hardware:

-Vector Linux

I do not yet have personal experience with Vector but I have seen it described as "excellent" for beginners. The "light" version claims to run on as little as 64 MB of RAM, and the regular 128.

-antiX MEPIS

While not generally considered a good choice for a complete beginner*, as one of the only distros that I have been able to successfully run live on the Latitude C600 that I described above, antiX MEPIS has proven extremely useful and valuable for this first-time Linux user.

While certainly not without difficulty and frustration at times, I did manage to fairly quickly, mostly through trial and error, to familiarize myself sufficiently with antiX to use for such basic everyday tasks as web browsing (with the included IceWeasel, a Firefox clone) and word-processing (with the included AbiWord, which I had already been using for some time under Windows.

Since this is the Linux Newbie forum, I might as well take this opportunity to suggest that it is a good idea for anyone considering exploring GNU/Linux to first try some of the same basic free and open source programs in their current operating system.

(*in contrast to its parent distro, SimplyMEPIS, which is one of the best for a 1st timer)