Giving an old laptop a new lease of life

Please excuse this 'which linux?' post, but my question wasn't answered by the thread at the top.
I have just been given an old laptop- an IBM Thinkpad 560x- P233MMX, 40MB RAM and I am wondering what OS would be best to use on it.I basically want to use it for word processing when I'm in the library (I'm a student).I have access to windows 95 and and 98SE to put on it (I have XP Pro too but i'm not that confident! ) but i was wondering whether anyone could recommend any version of Linux which would run faster than either of those.Please bear in mind that I have not used Linux before though so it would have to be an easy version to get used to, and would allow me to easily copy files from my XP Pro-based desktop, and preferably one which supports a wide range of PCMCIA devices, since the laptop has no USB ports.

Many thanks in advance for any help.


no matter how hard you try, you can't polish a turd. :]

Thanks for your help.I'm having trouble finding any version of those which would work with just 40Mb of RAM though-any ideas?
I would add more RAM but the screw over the memory slot is so worn that I can't undo it!

no matter how hard you try, you can't polish a turd. :]

The IBM thinkpads have a problem with sound install because of an obscure chipset IBM used in their thinkpads...you'll have difficulty tracking down a driver for it...or at least I did. Or you could try out a distro that is tailored to laptops and go from there. I recommend ones like PCLinuxOS or MEPIS Linux which install fantastically on laptops. Cool thing about MEPIS (something I've been using since late 2003) is that it is Debian Linux based and can use the Debian repositories so it has access to almost double the drivers and software that most Linux laptop distros have.

Check out the MEPIS forum laptop category <A HREF="http://www.mepis.org/forum/6" target="_new">http://www.mepis.org/forum/6</A> and pay attention to the positive feedback.

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<b>It is always brave to say what everyone thinks. </b> <i>Georges Duhamel</i>

TKS