Yes, wireless networking is indeed an area where tinkering cannot be avoided. Since I use DSL the most, I went and bought the DSL book by the developers. It's immensely helpful, and a nice way of sending a little money back to the guys who created the software I use on a daily basis.

Once you settle on a distro you like, I highly recommend finding out if the developers have a manual or guidebook for sale. It seems to be a trend for Linux distros. Instead of charging for the software, they try to recoup a little money by writing a book about it.

Hi, if anyone notes yet
You can install by using MyDSL folder thing at desktop...
Search for openoffice, install selected...
and enjoy!

I wish to thank all of the posters for their comments on this thread. After reading much about the different Linux distros available, and realizing that even when OO can be successfully installed in one way or another, there would always be the problem of wireless connectivity, which is, of course, the whole point of having Linux on an old laptop.

I downloaded Puppy Linux 4.3.1 months ago and was so thrilled with the results, I gave my wife a big hug. She understands how strange things excite me. Everything worked on every laptop with the exception of the headphones not disabling the internal speakers on my Toshiba. I ran almost every “puplet” variation of 4.3.1: Bruno Pup, Lucid Pup, MacPup, Puppy Stardust 013, and my favorite, Lighthouse Pup 443Gu2 which offers four desktop choices: JWM, IceWM, LXDE and Openbox. The Pwireless application worked in every instance except for the LXDE and Openbox desktop in Lighthouse. Lighthouse does not look as “cartoony” as the classic 4.3.1 (which I didn’t really mind since everything worked).

The following info is for absolute newbies: Here’s how easy it is - weighing in at about 100MB Puppy loads into ram (like DSL) and you can remove the CD so you can play an audio CD or DVD if you want. When finished, save all your new settings and bookmarks from your session to a pupsave file that you elect to create on your hard drive or flash drive. Because it loads to ram, Puppy is blazingly fast. You can leave your Windows OS completely untouched. Abiword and Gnumeric, which comprise Gnome Office, can save in Microsoft formats and can open Word and Excel documents. If I want to open a Powerpoint presentation sent via email, I download it to any drive then go to my Google Docs account and upload it to its online presentation program. Tah-dah!

Puppy is the single greatest introduction to Linux, IMHO, and I feel so confident with it that I plan to teach a class in it for Linux-curious Windows users in September. Barry Kauler’s contribution to the Linux community with his Puppy distro cannot be exaggerated. My favorite distros so far are Puppy Linux, Linux Mint, and Zenwalk. Currently, I’m playing with Lubuntu 10.04. I think I’ll try TinyMe again for the heck of it. Here are the rankings for the aforementioned distros on Distrowatch.com:

Puppy: 11
Linux Mint: 3
Zenwalk: 23

DSL does not show up on Distrowatch’s top 100 list currently. Again, thanks for your input and I will consider this thread closed.