I have been trying for the past 12 days to run a distro of linux on my old
laptop, its a Sony VAIO FX101 with 600mhx proc and 512 ram. I have found many
pitfalls in trying to do this, because for one reason or another the OS is not
satisfatory. For example,

DSL = no wifi drivers present
TinyMe = same
Crunchbang = same
PC Linux = slow - 2 minute boot up time but it is what I have settled on for
now,

Puppy linux = no open office and apparantly no way to install it.
Puppy Lighthouse = has open office, but the OS wont install, it goes sraight to
grub install and hasnt really installed it to the HD.

Ubuntu way too sow plus cannot utilise full screen of monitor (I've had to use
vga=ask and acpi=off on other distros but this doesnt work on Ubuntu)

Dream linux boots to black window
Lubuntu cannot get it to use full screen
Mepis = too slow


I wondered about DSL and TinyMe, TinyMe was a good install no problems, but, it
doesnt come with native drivers for wifi management, can I easily copy to a usb
stick such a program from my Ubuntu machine and not have the hastle of ferying
the usb back and forth doezens of times to meet varying upcoming dependancies?
The laptop has no cable network port and I only connect via usb wifi (which it
cant install). The issue I have is that even if I could get ndiswrapper to
utilise windows drivers fo the usb device, this means in future if I am
presented with another usb stick, I won't be able to use it without first
messing around finding windows drivers."

Well as you can see i've tried very hard with this, spent many many hours more
than i would have done with windows, although i did read one guy on the ubuntu
forums had my laptop and he used an old copy of ubuntu, I sent him a message to
ask him if he was still using that or a more modern copy, he hasnt responded.