Best Linux distro for old PC

Dabombinable · December 7, 2014

I'm looking at getting my old Pentium 3 back up and running with windows 98 and a Linux distro in dual boot. What distro would be the best one to use? It has a;Jetway 994AN-L motherboard, pentium 3 667MHZ (2xslot 1 celerons spare and a socket 370 500MHz celeron), 288MB RAM, Stealth 3 S540 32MB, 80GB HDD in master, 85MB in slave, 1 floppy disk drive and a cd rewritable drive. The main things I'm looking for is performance, being able to install standard linux programs (.deb/.rpm based) and great compatibility with various PCI/ISA cards.
The expansion cards currently in use (the bottom card is a ISA game port/midi/sound card):

Octavialicious · December 7, 2014

I would say Lubuntu, there may be some lighter distros but it's a good choice. Ubuntu is widely supported and easy to use, and Lubuntu is Ubuntu with a desktop enviroment that is less intensive for older pcs

Tagiau · December 7, 2014

Lubuntu, or anything ubuntu actually. Puppy is really nice for old and horribly outdated computers.

Dabombinable · December 7, 2014

Thanks. I tried Lubuntu and it seemed to work well, just need to get the linux drivers now and I should have the beginnings of a decent media center/ DOS gaming rig.

Edit: Windows 98 decided to stop working, so I'm using windows xp. It turns out that the computer is over double the recommended requirements and works well.