Suggestion for best Distro to put onto an old laptop

[faintdreams]

I have an ancient (but otherwise fully functional) Toshiba laptop. It is a Satillite 220CDS.

I want to use it as a stand alone writing machine, (with ability ti save to a usb stick), and I think that Linux is probably the best way to go, but I am unsure which linux distro would be the least amount of hassle to install.

The gui doesn't have to be too snazzy (I've used fluxbox before so I'm not afraid of minimalism), but whatever I use it has to support a competent word processing package

My google fu is failing me so I welcome any suggestions.

Thanks (in advance)

Faintdreams

Duh posted to personal journal and no community one  !

Comments

[aphenine]

I several times did a Debian network install. The best thing about the network install is that it installs the absolute minimum of packages so that you can install the rest from the internet. As a side effect, it's really good at making light-weight installs where you need absolute control over the packages you put on it. I especially liked how I could install as much of Gnome as I wanted without pulling the whole thing down (although you have to be careful, as if you trip the metapackage dependency, you get it all).

At the time I installed it, it only took up some 200Mb with the minimum and I got a graphical interface with 400Mb. It's probably the best option if you want something more than the small Linux variants but less than a full Linux distribution, and being Debian, you'll have access to everything that that's in Ubuntu if you want it (and can run it).

Oooh I likie!

[faintdreams]

I hadn't considered a network (as opposed to plain desktop) install before, but the points you raise are all excellent ones.

Thanks you've given me a lot to think about.