StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I was looking at an older laptop which was being refurbished.....
The previous owner had Puppy Linux on it.
I did a bit of research on it myself. It is a very low footprint of Linux which can be kept completely in RAM if a computer has 256 Megs of Ram. I am thinking about downloading and experimenting with it.

Curious if anybody has played with it themselves and their thoughts on it?

It's great as a USB linux distro, but it's lack of substance on the desktop (it uses a very lightweight DE) means I wouldn't want to use it for everyday use. Besides, it's meant to be booted off a thumb drive or cd. Psycho Smiley has a little more experience, but he's been pretty inactive for the last little while. Mind you, since this is an older laptop, something like Puppy Linux might suit it better than say Ubuntu. You may want to look into other low resource distros as well.

All of my computers are reasonably able to handle XP at the moment

One reason I am curious is because I help people sometimes restore their computers.....

My usual trick is to reformat the hard drive in whatever OS they have a key for. I am just trying to come up with options if they don't have a key and need their OS redone.....

Saw Puppy Linux and thought it might be a potential option

In that case, I'd be more inclined to go with Ubuntu or another mainstream desktop distro. You're not going to get the support, not to mention the ease of application installation with Puppy Linux (although it is admittedly relatively easy to install programs) as you are with Ubuntu.