Check out http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ as it runs very well on low end hardware and utilizes some of Knoppix's hardware detection infrastructure. I've got it running quite nicely on several low end laptops ie Pentium-90 w/24Mb ram with X running. No cdrom or USB can be overcome by creating an image from a well endowed system and dumping it on the low end hardware(needs floppy drive and network card) using "Ghost for Unix" aka g4u available at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ . Good luck in your noble endeavor.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ as it runs very well on low end hardware and utilizes some of Knoppix's hardware detection infrastructure. I've got it running quite nicely on several low end laptops ie Pentium-90 w/24Mb ram with X running. No cdrom or USB can be overcome by creating an image from a well endowed system and dumping it on the low end hardware(needs floppy drive and network card) using "Ghost for Unix" aka g4u available at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ . Good luck in your noble endeavor.
Dominic Caffey
You might want to have a look at http://gpl-violations.org and consider how this factors into your situation.
- Dom