Yes...I would stick with debian. Although I find it strange to hear the the
2.6 kernel runs slowly. Have you tried the AMD optimised kernel? or looked
into compiling the kernel yourself and doing custom optimizations?

I'm currently running debian sarge on an old Toshiba Protege (486) as well
as an old IBM pentium laptop and both run great. I use the 486 strictly in
console mode (screen, htop, elinks and mp3blaster) as a streamed music
receiver and manipulates the front end to my slimserver via elinks. The IBM
just makes a great portable console for plugging into switches etc. (2lbs?)

I don't know that I'd trust either to run a gui at a reasonable speed, but
they work well in their current configurations and would recommend the same
for you maybe.

Cheers.

- Erich Newell


-- 
"A man is defined by the questions that he asks; and the way he goes about
finding the answers to those questions is the way he goes through life."