Community Software for Community Musicians update

My old Mepis machine having bit the dust (not a Mepis thing, more a Compaq hardware thing), I think it only fair to update my Linux situation. I'm currently running Ubuntu Dapper Drake on my low-end Dell. Its predecessor, Ubuntu Breezy Badger, was the easiest Linux install I've ever done; from there, I just upgraded via the simple instructions.

Meanwhile, being desirous of a working lightweight laptop and unwilling to pay for a new one, I rehabilitated my old HP Omnibook 800CT with Damn Small Linux. No USB ports or working CD-ROM on this thing, but by means of its old docking station I installed an entire Linux distribution to the hard drive via a 256MB USB thumb drive. This means that I have a tiny laptop with a 10" display with which I can do email and web browsing securely via wireless or ethernet (for both of which I had PC cards lying around). All my web radio streams are set up on this machine for use in any wireless situation as well. In my humble opinion, this is by far the best use one can make of a Pentium 166 MMX machine with 48MB of memory and a 2GB hard drive. When I'm home, it sits atop my stereo hooked up to its auxiliary input, serving web streams, my favorite new discoveries being Hober Internet Radio and The Internet Archive.

All this comes more or less free with your broadband connection, which is quite possibly insanely cheap (Verizon is selling DSL for about $15/mo in the Boston area at this point). All the help you need to put it together is on the web. You don't need a new machine to run Windows Vista. You don't even need a Mac (although you can run Linux on an old one). Buy an instrument instead--or, more realistically, pay off those energy bills...