Linux kernel advice wanted

I will be trying out various distro releases having kernels 2.4.31 to 2.6.29, and wish to alter my custom-build specs to accommodate these. Currently doing Google research on it, but this avenue sometimes fails, so want to invite any advice from 'legacy' users to accomplish my goal.

 

What are you installing on and what distro are you sampling?

 

My hardware list was chosen for current distro releases, and now that I decided to go legacy:
Debris 2.0
Puppy 4.2.1
Caos linux 2
eAR OS 1.10
NetSecL 2.6
Ultimate Edition 2.2
...I need to rethink hardware choices. For example, do I need to go SCSI instead of SATA?

 

2.4 is old (I would suggest staying away from it) but 2.4 supports SATA.
I would suggest downloading so-called "live" CD/DVD's to test how well the various distros support your hardware. That will tell you more than kernel version because different distros may not have options enabled even if the kernel version supports it or they may have patched the kernel to support things not originally supported in the vanilla code of that kernel version.

 

You did not really answer the question about hardware specs. What type of PC are you installing the distro on?
CPU speed? Amount of RAM? Size of hard drive? Other hardware information would also be useful to know.

 

Here is the specs on what I'm running. This distro supports hardware, that most don't. You can customize to your needs. One word of caution It's not as user friendly as most distros. I would not recommend this distro to a new Linux user.

My DVD drive, and hard drive are both SATA drives.