Distros

So, I've been doing some research...

Always a dangerous sign, because it usually means I'm either going to end up buying something grotesquely expensive, or I'm going to tear something up...

Hopefully, this time is different.  (Fingers to the crossed position, please...)

I've been searching out Linux distros that should be able to work on my old R40 Thinkpad with it's strangely unloved Pentium-M chip.  This came up after I tried to do a Lubuntu 12.10 install, and found out that that version won't support a chip that doesn't include Physical Address Extensions.

After doing some tripping about the Linux forums, I decided that Mint 13 sounded like a good choice.  It's the latest long term release of Mint, and doesn't require PAEs.  (Mint 14, however, does.)  Then the big choice became...  Cinnamon or MATE interface.  (Dodging the religious wars over this, as I don't have a canine in the fight, I'm leaning towards MATE, as it's supposed to be "lighter weight."  Though Cinnamon looks nicer.)  And I quickly rejected the Debian versions, as I'm still not overly comfortable straying too far from the shores of Ubuntu...

OK, so then I notice that I need to download and burn to DVD.  Sooo...  Off to the local Wal-Mart (which gives me hives) to get some DVD-R's...

Back home, I'm doing a little bit more reading up, when I run across...  Puppy Linux.  I remember the "Linux Guy" at the local shop uses this variant to do his testing, and spoke very highly of it.  So, more research...  Hey, there's "Precise Puppy", which is (you guessed it) built of Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise Pangolin"...  I start thinking about an old Acer netbook that's been buried under a pile of junk for a long time...

And...  There's the "Wary Puppy" version that's supposed to run on older hardware...  (How old..?)

So, at the very least, two new versions of Linux I want to download and play with.  I still haven't even dragged out my other laptops to do the downloading and burning.  (The X60s being sans DVD burner...)

Yeah, this may all be getting entirely out of hand...