I have an "old" 2006 era laptop with all of 176 MB of RAM (oh, and 1000s of bad addresses, so it keeps segfaulting all the time). On this setup i use stock Ubun

I have an "old" 2006 era laptop with all of 176 MB of RAM (oh, and 1000s of bad addresses, so it keeps segfaulting all the time). On this setup i use stock Ubuntu 7.10 (the last Ubuntu which "worked"). And its not stripped down or anything --- run firefox, emacs, beagle destkop search, watch movies, etc. Seriously, if you have low hardware resources, pick a 5-7 years old distro and you'll be fine.