[Lazarus] Lazarus on my ancient computer?

[Bart]

Hi,

This is a bit off-topic.

I have an ancient computer: Intel Celeron 700Mhz, 512MB RAM, 20GB IDE HD.
(http://flyingsheep.nl/computer_nostalgie.htm#celeron700)
(Hardware upgrades are not in the picture.)

Up until now this system runs WindowsME.
It used to be a dualboot system with Suse 10.0, but unfortunately my
second HD (or the controller) died.

On Both OS-es I had Lazarus trunk up and running with fpc 2.6.4, and I
used the WinMe environment to find and fix Win9x specific bugs in
Lazarus.

However, now we (as in: Lazarus) have said goodbye to Win9x, the
machine can get a new life.

I would like to run some kind of Linux on it, which must be rather
light weight given the specs of the machine.
This Linux must be able to:
- run fpc 3.0 series (I install them from script, not using any packet manager)
- run Lazarus trunk
- access an external HD (via USB 1.0) with an NTFS filesystem
- access internet out of the box (the system is connected to my DSL
modem/router via cable, so no WiFi is needed here) and have a browser
(GUI, not just lynx).
- auto detect and configure my LCD monitor (this drove me mad on Suse 10.0)

Thing I would like to have, but they are not essential:
- some viewer for pictures (bmp,png,jpg)
- play mp3
- record sound (the system has a decent soundcard, and I used it to
digitize someof my LP's and cassettes).

I do not mind using a console to get things installed.
However, installing the binutils and devel libraries Lazarus needs,
must be achievable without having to search the net for days and days.

In the past with Suse 10.0 I've gone through dependancy hell to achieve this.

My only other experience with Linux is my Fedora Core 18 VM.
Setting up Lazarus there was a breeze (install compiler, binutils, svn
client. Download sources, buid).
The KDE desktop it uses however is beyond me though.
Somehow I succeeded in creating a Lazarus "shortcut" on the desktop,
but I never understood how this was supposed to work at all (given the
fact that Lazarus is not installed using a packet manager, because it
is trunk).

As for WM's: I'm used to KDE, but that might probably be a bit too
heavy fo this old beast, so I don't mind experimenting with another,
more light weight, one.
That being said, the OS should come with GTK2 (and maybe QT) libraries
in order to have a functional Lazarus.

So, do you have tips on which Linux flavour to install on this machine?

Bart