Got an OOLLLDDD laptop

[BrianG]

OK, I got this really old laptop from someone at work. Apparently, WinXP wouldn't boot and their restore disk wouldn't work, so they just got a new one and gave this one to me to do whatever. It's in really nice shape, but the specs:
- 1.6GHz celeron
- 256MB RAM (and the video uses some of that)
- 30GB HDD.
I installed XP on it, but man is it slow! It needs another 256MB at the very least to even be usable for emergency internet purposes. So, here are a couple questions:

1) Does anyone have an SODIMM PC2100 memory they could part with VERY cheap? I can get a stick of 256MB for around $25 on ebay but really don't even want to spend that much. Free would be best.

2) Since WinXP is so slow (even another 1GB of mem won't compensate for such a slow CPU), what would be the best Linux distro to install on this? Ubuntu wants at least 512MB unless I go the "minimal install" route, but I just want something I can easily install along with Chrome or FF. Nothing fancy.