I’ve had trouble with Slackware 12 and the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450). Something happens when services load that prevent it from running. I’ll have to take a much closer look, but I’m ready to try Slackware 11 just to see if that makes a difference.
I see in the Slackware security page that patches are still being doing for version 11, and even 10.2 for Firefox issues, and back to 8.1 for things like CUPS.
But Slackware 11 is pretty well covered, and I recall having a better time with Zenwalk back in the 4.2 days when I was first getting into Linux.
Even so, Debian is running pretty well on the $0 Laptop. I don’t have Xfce installed, so I don’t know how much better it will do than GNOME. And in Ubuntu 7.10, I can actually make the touchpad do what I want, which is to run at the right speed and NOT tap-to-click unless I want.
And I have been running Puppy 3.00 from live CD (compatible with Slackware 12 packages), and now that I’ve managed to control the noisy fan with a few modeprobes set to run at startup and a cron job, I just might stick with it for … everything. It’s so fast. No tap-to-click in Puppy, but since I don’t want it, that’s fine.
I installed the SFS file for OpenOffice on one of my other Puppy setups, but not this one. I’ll have to try it. I actually like the way Damn Small Linux adds things like the GIMP and AbiWord — the filesystem in DSL (and, by extension Knoppix, which I’ve also been running on the $0 Laptop) seems more flexible than Puppy’s. I don’t think you have any size limitations. I think Puppy’s pup_save can only be 1.5 GB, but that still doesn’t stop you from mounting other filesystems and working with them, so it’s a six-of-one situation anyway.
And Damn Small Linux runs like crap on the $0 Laptop. I just can’t get the X configuration right, no matter how many different ways I try it. Puppy, of course, is perfect.
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The CTRL freak 
Fun name 😉