I'm going to be starting a drive in my city for (most likely used) computer/parts donations
then setting them up w/linux and re-donating the pc's back to the community
mostly to "underprivileged" children who may have some windows knowledge basically so they can surf the web and do homework and even get into komputing
so, while i haven't been in the linux field too consistently over the past couple years
i'd like to know your thoughts on a resource and newbie friendly distro. and since it will be installed on various machine specs, the most compatible distro
honestly i was thinking about going with xubuntu but there are so many new distros that i dont have time to go through them all and i've already contacted ubuntu about the project
but i'd like your advice before i finalize anything

any help is greatly appreciated!
thanks

It's always difficult recommending a distro to people who have never used Linux (not you), so really all that you should be concered with is will it run on old hardware. Maybe pick a distro that's still based on a 2.4 kernel.

I would also recommend giving them a distro that has an easy package mangement system. Debian is obviously the best, but Etch (latest version) comes with a 2.6 kernel, so that's a problem.

And give them recovery options if you can, a dd image of the system restorable via CD would be nice. When they run into problems they may not be willing to fix it and the computer will never get used, but a restore CD will make things easy.

There's some interesting stuff here...

http://polishlinux.org/choose/linux-on-old-hardware/

Moved: This thread is more suitable in the Linux Distributions forum and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

TheLateJC - thanks man, i'll def check that out. zenwalk is looking pretty good and i like xfce. and the restore cd is an awesome idea because i was worried about what kind of support i'd be able to give them in the long run...i'm assuming i'll be giving them a little demonstration and documentation anyway

reddazz - thanks, for whatever reason i couldn't find where to delete my post so i left it here as to not double post :/

If you want a thread moved to a different forum, use the report button and ask a moderator to move it for you.

Check out this thread about a user with similar requirements who chose Puppy and another one.

Vector Linux
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

BeaFanatIX
http://bea.cabarel.com/

Elive:
http://www.elivecd.org/

Luit Linux
http://luitlinux.sarovar.org/