ripper, try using the icewm window manager.
it is leaner by far than the KDE default, we are talking DIFERENCE here.
i have a p1@100Mhz and it works ok with icewm (ok no flier but acceptable).
the comandline IS a hurdle, but once you have basics you could do virtually anything in console (konsole, aterm, eterm, xterm... are just a way to use bash in X).