
Consider these memory requirements for Fedora Core 2, as specified by Red Hat:
Minimum for graphical: 192MB and
Recommended for graphical: 256MB Does that sound any alarm bells with you? 192MB minimum? I've been running Linux for five years (and am a huge supporter), and have plenty of experience with Windows, Mac OS X and others. And those numbers are shocking -- severely so. No other general-purpose OS in existence has such high requirements. Linux is
getting very fat.
There are a number of small fast distros that boot right off a cd with great hardware detection and install easily, some of them suprisingly small and light! Search on distrowatch.com or Google and you'll find them. I should warn you though, you likly won't find a perfect fit, and may have to roll your own based on an existing one.