linux for a really shit computer

i have an older laptop that i'd like to use for web browsing (including youtube videos), downloading torrents and watching videos (including HD videos). i haven't used linux before but i'd like to because maybe i can do these things without excruciatingly slow program load and response times.

what distribution should i choose for speed? one that is a 'major' one. i tried google but i got a million different distros most of which didn't seem to have a big community or a lot of support. is lxde the best desktop manager to use?

LXDE or XFCE are the way to go if you want something lightweight (meaning less RAM usage).  The latest Debian stable (Sarge) with LXDE boots using less than 70MB of RAM when I last checked.  Of course LXDE and XFCE are sometimes lacking in some things GNOME or KDE would have such as lots of widgets of such to put on your taskbars.  I don't know much about GNOME 3 or Unity but you can try them and see what you like.  You could always install some popular distro like Mint and install LXDE or XFCE on top of that ('apt-get install xfce' or some shit) then whe you log on you should be able to choose which environment to log on to.

I like Debian LXDE but I had to get wireless working on my own which I didn't in Ubuntu.

tl;dr: You don't need a special distro for LXDE/XFCE, you can install it on any of them.  Debian LXDE uses less than 70MB of RAM on default boot.

i'm reading debian documentation atm. it's very confusing about partitioning. i've also looked up elsewhere and it mentioned gparted but said that it can ruin your windows installation. my laptop os is vista and i want to have both vista and debian on my system and i don't want to harm vista. what is the best course of action for doing this?

>>3
According to a user on #debian on freenode's IRC Debian's GUI installer does have the ability to shrink a Windows partition but I don't have any more details than that.

Backup your shit before you install if you want to dual boot in case something goes wrong.

CrunchBang

installing debian atm

i accidentally selected the wrong keyboard, but when i clicked go back it didn't go back no matter how many times i clicked it. i don't even know what keyboard was selected. it didn't detect the wireless networks available like windows is capable of doing. asked me for 'essid' and something else then tried to auto detect some shit and failed. furthermore, i had already accepted an agreement for 'non-free' software but it asked me again later and i forgot to tick i accept, and it just said 'it's been cancelled' and it didn't give me a chance to go back and accept.

ok it's installed so how do i set up my wireless internet? and how do i install this .deb package? i doubleclicked it and it asked me what application to open it with... i also tried to extract it but it said 'ar not found'.

i hit something or other and now my keybaord is typing in some layout that has characters that aren't english. how do i fix this? how do i fix it without using the console since i can't type a thing in it, it's all in the wrong characters.

also, when i finally get that fixed, how do i install that .deb package? do i have to actually manually type in the console dpkg -i and then the file path?

i installed the .deb package in root console window but that's the firmware for wireless adapter. HOW DO I SET INTERNET UP? ffs... and how do i change my keyboard layout, and stop it from changing it to latin when i press a certain key...

nvm, i fixed everything and everything is working