I would agree with Mac The Knife about Puppy Linux.
Very small and has most general applications.
It has a lot of Wi-Fi drvers already installed.
So it shouldn't be to much trouble to set up the Wi-Fi connection.
Also, has a couple of graphic drivers which cover most basic options.
Instructions are also quite straight forward and the forum is helpful.
I used it to breathe life into an old Toshiba Dynabook P3 1.3 and a Celeron desktop.
Good enough for the kids to general surfing.
You can run it from the CDROM as well as a flashdrive.
Or even do a full install.
The whole O/S is only around 94-6 MB
I've never tried VectorLinux.
Like others, I have found Ubuntu to be rather bloated.