Which Linux for old laptop?

[Billb2]

I Have an old IBM Thinkpad 600 (model 2645-51U, PentiumII, 266 mhz, 160mb ram) notebook. I use it when traveling for email and photo storage/sharring. It's small, rugged and has decent battery life.

I've removed the HDD and been booting linux live distros and using flash drives as storage, mainly to aviod virus/malware at nefarious WiFi locations.

While that works well, there are some anoyances, like only one USB port, so it's either wireless mouse or flash drive. So I'd like to put a HDD back in and boot linux.

I replaced the original 6 gig HDD with a 18 gigger. Interestingly enough, the exact original IBM optional Travelstar upgrade drive, which I found it available on the interwebs for $18.49 - $379.00... don't ya just love it!.

Anyway, I've live booted PC-Linux, KDE, and Umbutu, all of which worked fine. The question I have is which distro, of all those available, would be the best for this situation?

Cliffs:
Old PII laptop, which minimal Linux distro?

 

[lxskllr]

I'd use Puppy. That's perfect for old machines, and that box will really fly with Puppy.

 

[Nothinman]

With only 160M of memory any distro is going to be sluggish.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Puppy or Damn Small Linux will be your best choices, with Puppy being more modern and DSL being easier on the resources. Also, you can probably free some RAM by reducing the buffer for the graphics in the BIOS.