Why does it have to be so damn tough???

[RandomGoon]

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).

I agree with OErjan about IceWM; I got it to run nicely on a P133 machine. KDE is HUNGRY for resources Just so you know, if you press F2 at the "boot:" prompt you can see, on the second line "knoppix desktop=icewm" (and some others). Use that sans quotes and you'll boot to an IceWM desktop.

'Goon