[NCLUG] Lite distros/programs for old pcs?

[DJ Eshelman]

Greetings all- sorry, it's been awhile, but that's the way life goes
sometimes.
I'm
taking on a project to breathe new life into about 15 old (486 33 up to
P120) PCs and a few elderlyMacs.  The project is for my church in areas that don't currently have PCs:

1)  Nursery- we'd
like some sort of email capability and it would be cool to rig some sort
of interface to alertour AV control in the sanctuary of parents needing to come pick up their
brats ... er, kids...One of the other big uses of these computers would be for scheduling
volunteers.
2)
Sunday School- I might be sticking to Win95/98 for these since they will
likely want to use somesoftware- but one never knows where I could stick linux in...

3)  Library- I'd like to create
a database to track usage- obviously there are a lot of old-school Un*x
systems out there, butI'd like something slightly easier to use for the somewhat elderly folk
inhabiting ourlittle library.  I have an old Sun system that I was thinking of using as
a database server(oooooohhhh!)  Some sort of web interface would rock, seems like a neat
mySQL project, but I'mwondering if anyone knows of anything out there (I know, I know... check
sourceforge...)

Basically under our current budget crisis, I'm sure that I could
easily deploy linux because we simply don't want to buy newer computers
and certainly can'tafford any more software licensing...  But I of course can't exactly
expect them to tryrunning RH 9 with open office on these things either- I need a nice slim
kernel with only thebasics- and I'm just not savvy enough to do my own- too much risk of those
early Sunday Morningcalls :)

Any ideas/experience would be awesome.

Thanks!

-DJ "The Deej"
Eshelman
Independent Contractor  (that means I'm unemployed)
jit-tech.com