As an exercise in frustration I've been trying to resurect an old Compaq Armada 7790. I was running RedHat 7.3.(not all that well)
Found DSL from an article by someone who was doing the same thing. Once I installed it to hard drive I was hooked. This is the lightest and fastest OS I've used since I played with Oberon back in the day. It has made this Compaq usable again. I have even been playing with it on my big box. (AMD 2800 w/ 1 gig of ram. You should try that. It smokes!)
Back to the Compaq. The WavLan works flawlessly. I would like to get my other wireless card (an SMC) working. Not really having alot of luck with that but I'll keep trying.