What linux would be the best for an old AMD K6?

Puppy Linux DSL (Damn Small Linux)

Puppy linux might be about the fastest, ,with the least amount of ram, If you are able to get,or have more ram,,, 256mb or so others may also work,,, (( reminds me of a recent attempt to install linux on a laptop with a amd k6 500 mhz. with 256mb of ram )) First you may want to check your bios version ,,, Older than 2000 ,,, boot with acpi disabled, may be needed for some of the newer linux kernels, An older distro of linux, would probably be a better bet,,,, I myself downloaded and tried many different distros, ( some of the DE's ( desktop environment ) XFCE Gnome Kde, Ice , ) XFCE is probably the lightest,,, and least resource hungry,,, Suse 11 and Ubuntu, actually ran, on it ,,, but slow,,, Good time to experiment and find out about many of the other options,,, Mint ,,, Xubuntu ,, ( X standing for xfce ) Dream linux. http://distrowatch.com/ Might be the place to start,,, On a 700mhz machine with ((( I have at the moment ))) 768mb of ram, PC linux OS and it runs Great !!! Your video card will make a big difference also,,, Good Luck Huh !!! MSI 845e mb 1 gb ram and a p4 2.4n running fedora 7 xp ,win 2000 advanced server and win 98 SE alot to learn and I know so little !!!!

Linux comes in basically two forms. One is source based installations such as Gentoo. It is the slowest way to make a linux system. It performs the fastest since you create every part exactly for your needs. Second way is what is termed a "distro". Distro's are built usually for many "like kind" systems or users. The creators of disros usually state minimum hardware requirements or other cheat codes or boot options for various systems. Understand that linux is a very basic component of an operating system. What people see is normally termed a window manager. The window manager is what usually stops one from using it based on too little hardware. Window managers require a lot of ram and take up speed. There are very good "minimal" distros as stated above. Try them first. Consider building linux for that machine. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10