My first computer a Philco-Ford 102 processor, of
course it was the one we used at work. First home
computer was a TRS-80, cassette, B/W monitor with a
whopping 4k of memory before you loaded a program. I
remember programming in Basic to get the most out of
the amount of memory you had. Now days a lot of
programs have so many bugs in them.

I tried Red Hat Linux about 8yrs ago and did not care
as it was to me really confusing to use. I heard/read
about Unbuntu and thought I would try it on a older
laptop I have. Well I tried to boot it from a cd and I
get the Unbuntu logo and it stops there. I have a cd
of Puppy Linux so I will play around with it.

I know with all computers more ram is good, so since
my laptop has only 248megs of ram I figure that is why
Unbuntu doesn't work.

With limited RAM, instead of the Live-CD use the alternate desktop CD
to allow installation.

Go back to older versions for older computers and instead of Gnome or
KDE, use the less resource-intensive Xubuntu or Fluxbox desktops.

MEPIS 7 is KDE based upon Debian Stable and will run in such computers
as you described. Anti-X is MEPIS Debian Testing with Fluxbox and will
run with even less RAM.

And just in case you didn't know, this is the treasure-trove listing
of Linux releases.
http://distrowatch.com/

I got started on the punch cards in 1970 and went with an Atari about
the time you were using Commodore. Later with CP/M and DOS, later
adding DesqView to DOS, took awhile to warm to Windows as I still
liked the control you had at DOS command line, and didn't have with
"Windows for Dummies". Linux carries over the same philosophy of
allowing a dedicated user to not have to suffer through a dumbed-down
interface. For instance, the MS defaults of hiding .exe will never
stay on any computer I touch.

Your last sentence shows the peril of Over-Moderation or the threat of
Censorship. There is no need for posters to feel on edge that anything
they say will be banned.