Please help me resolve some (probably) simple issues.

I'm trying to put together a relatively simple setup. My PCs are older so 
I've tried to avoid the 2.4 kernel. (The Red Hat 7.1  install was a 
problem and consumed too much memory. And the mouse didn't work right.) 
Currently, my favorite PC is an IBM PC300GL (a thin desktop) with a 
pentium 200MMX and 128MB RAM. I've tried KDE 2.x.x ("konquerer") on SuSE 
6.4 and prefer the simple older KDE (KFM) (forget "nautilus"). I don't 
want a browser in KDE, just a GUI file manager.

The problem is finding out how to combine StarOffice (perhaps with Java 
and error suppression) and Kylix on the same simple linux distribution. 
StarOffice seems happy with older distributions. Kylix rejects (g)libc 
2.1.3 and insists on either a patch or (g)libc 2.2 used by (eg) SuSE 7.1. 
The patches SuSE offers don't seem to satisfy Kylix with regard to some 
"loader bug." 

For an instrumentation and controls system, one prefers a smaller PC 
(forget embedded boards), a multi-tasking OS with simple graphical 
controls (older SuSE linux), a powerful API (Kylix), and a cross platform 
file system with browser (StarOffice).

Integrating these three software elements cleanly for a controls 
architecture has been a (fun) challenge.  

Various complex devices should be manageable by this generic controller 
architecture. (I'm betting on stationary fuel cell co-generating plants.) 
 

Clearly, software integration and optimization is not my forte. Any 
suggestions are appreciated. (No wise guys, please.) 

Thanks,
Rick.