[Calvin Locke]

I got Fedora 5 running on a 1Ghz 256M combo mobo. I run BOINC on it, except for playing the games now and then.

How about the disk? Or PSU? I've had problems with both dying slow deaths on old machines.

The HD was slave to the DVD/CD drive, and it stopped the DVD from doing everything but being recognized. Disco'd the HD, and the DVD worked.

With the PSU, the DVD/CD drive would randomly error.

[gura]

"I got Fedora 5 running on a 1Ghz 256M combo mobo. I run BOINC on it, except for playing the games now and then.

How about the disk? Or PSU? I've had problems with both dying slow deaths on old machines.

The HD was slave to the DVD/CD drive, and it stopped the DVD from doing everything but being recognized. Disco'd the HD, and the DVD worked.

With the PSU, the DVD/CD drive would randomly error."

It's a laptop so there's not a lot he can mess around with on it. The default Ubuntu install cd is also a live CD hence the large RAM requirement.

His best bet is probably to look in some of the linux on laptops guides on the net and find out which flavor works best on his.