I really want to get into the world of linux but it's all a bit daunting, therefore i've deciced to run a distro on my Old NEC laptop, however i need to know what distro (anyone sick of these questions yet!) What i want is: Preferably a live CD as then if i bottle it its incredibly easy to switch back to windows. To be able to run a word processing program that is compatible with MS word To be able to use my belkin wifi 54g card so i can access a windows network. as i'm a linux newbie as little command line or mounting type complexitivity as possbile. I'm not bothered about a fancy Gui as the laptop would run faster on one that was less fancy. the specs are as follows... 56Mb of RAM 551 MHZ AMD K6 PROCESSOR 5.57 GB HDD with windows eating 4 gb of that. any help in this would be greatly appriciated...

Knoppix is one of the most popular live CD distros around....KDE might be a bit of a strain on your PC though, perhaps Morphix Lightgui would be a better option. I haven't tried it but have heard good things.... http://www.morphix.org

I'm new to linux as well, after trying a couple of live cd's I've recently installed mandrake 9.2 to dual boot on my laptop. (my old desktops only a P 200) For compatability with MS word I'd recomend Open Office (which I also run in XP), which I think is on the knoppix live CD but I'm not certain, it may also be on the mandrake move CD since its on the mandrake 9.2 CD's. For speed give Damn Small Linux a try (and try typing knoppix toram at the boot prompt, I'm not sure if you'll have enough ram to run it all from ram but its worth a try) slaxware is also supposed to be fast. I think mandrake move may be the most likely to support your wifi card, but thats just going by mandrakes reputation for hardware detection. Although mandrake 9.2 hasnt detected my pcmcia, cdrw/dvd, or graphics card correctly. I would recomend experimenting with live cds on a desktop if you have one, linux doesnt seem to cope well with identifying laptop hardware (neither does windows but I know how to deal with it in windows)

I am no Linux expert by any means but with those specs you won't have too many choices. Add more ram and you will have many more options. I would give DamnSmallLinux a look. The whole cd weighs in at a mere 50 megs. Sandman An Official Microsoft Minion. ÿ

I run slackware 9.1 on a 450 MHz K6 and it flies....it does have 384Mb of RAM though.

I run debian on a 366 mhz pII laptop with 128 MB of ram. It isn't that fast but its still usable. I recommend a harddisk installation for a slow machine since live cds have compressed filesystems (which hog the cpu while decompressing stuff). Also, an HD is much faster than a cdrom drive. There are 10 kinds of people, those who count in binary and those who don't.

Thanks everyone. I've downloaded several and by far my favorite is DAMN SMALL LINUX. It just has everything and a complete lack of bloatware.