I would try running ubuntu on your old machine Icosahedron. if you have a spare hd, drop it in, and install it, then plug your old drive back in (it will find it automatically). You will still be able to access all your win9x files on the other hard drive, that way. For older (video challenge) hardware I'd suggest using the XCFE version of Ubuntu called Xubuntu http://www.xubuntu.org/

The only problems I have had (on old notebooks, mind you) is support for "winmodems".

It uses the same application installer, so getting things like gimp are a simple click-click in a GUI.

-Rob A>