[Techtalk] A distro for old machines...

[Bud]

Hi,

  I am interested in trying to build a desktop distro that will work on old 
computers. By old I mean it should work on a P MMX 200Mhz+ with 32MB ram and 
a 4MB video card. 

It should be able to run X windows with a decent desktop so that its intutive 
for newbies/windows users (with minimal documentation). The applications I am 
looking to run are mainly office based. Simple mutimedia is ofcourse a like 
to have option (play mp3, mpg/vcd and an audio cd)

 Here are some of my questions I have.. if anyone has any insight I'd be 
interested to know..

* Would kde/qt work faster than Gnome 2.0/gtk 2+
* Would debian be a good starting point or should I look into Slackware
* Would kernel 2.6 be able to work faster (having been customized) or should I 
stick with 2.4 or even perhaps consider 2.2
* Would i386 be faster than i586 compiled apps if one was to run in a PII or 
PIII platform? I heard some ppl say that newer architecturs can emulate i386 
better than i586. Since my bottom line is Pentium I could consider i586

* Would dietlibc be anyfaster and effectively usable as a replacement for 
glibc

* Has this been done? Any similar project?

 Being in a third world country (Sri Lanka) there are plenty of P MMX and PII 
machines floating around running windoze 98. It would be nice to be able to 
replace them with a free alternative which is more up2date.

Bud
-- 
We can change the world if god gave us the source code