Maximum PC

ok, i have an old laptop, p166. 64 mb ram, 2 gig hard drive, ive been wanting to get into this whole linux\free thing. Im a total noob, thorougly enjoying my cushy windows system, the only command line ive used was dos on my old 486. Im not sure what the best to use is, ive heard\read that bsd can run off a 386, so my laptop can def run it well, but what about with gui? and also as a newb, where can i learn how to use it, and do basic things, like installing software, getting on the net ect..??

2GB of disk space is gonna be a squeeze,i would up the RAM to 128...i think you should be alright with the P166.

the place to start would be a live CD www.knoppix.org (for the KDE desktop) or www.gnoppix.org (for the gnome desktop) both are based on debian

suse has a live DVD

and jipstyle's favorite, gentoo has some live CDs also
http://navynos.linux.pl/
and
http://www.jollix.de/en/en_home.html

and linux.org is a great place to start

Agreed - nothing on the hard drive gets touched, very easy way to get to see Linux.

Otherwise, to install I'd recommend Mandrake, Fedora, or SuSE - all are good to start with. I don't recommend Gentoo/Debian/Slack to those who have little to no Linux/BSD experience.

I'll second that and add that while technically you could run KDE or GNOME on that system you would probably be much happier running something slimmer and more responsive like Fluxbox or Xfce.