I find it ironic that Linux set out to be the bloatware buster, but the leading distros have themselves become bloatware. Just look how much the hardware requirements have escalated in the history of Ubuntu, Fedora, and many other leading distros. There was a time when 256 MB of RAM was plenty. In fact, my very first distro was Fedora Core 1 (which came with the book _Linux For Nongeeks_). On this computer (1 GHz, 256 MB of RAM), Fedora Core 1 was reasonably fast. This computer falls short of the requirements of today's Fedora. I don't recommend Ubuntu (or even Xubuntu) for anyone with less than 512 MB of RAM. As these leading distros increase their hardware requirements with each version and cut off support for older versions, they're throwing away a segment of their users. Why do these distros need so much more RAM and processor speed? What's driving the escalating hardware requirements? I'm glad that there is antiX Linux. This is my primary OS. antiX Linux has compatibility with the superior Debian repository (unlike Puppy Linux, which still has a weak repository), user-friendliness (unlike Debian, which requires so much tweaking), AND is plenty fast with only 256 MB of RAM. The success of antiX Linux makes me wonder why other distros have much higher hardware requirements. What exactly do the users get for their extra processor speed and RAM? Why do these other distros need more processor speed and RAM to do the same thing that antiX Linux does? -- Jason Hsu http://www.jasonhsu.com/ee.html http://www.jasonhsu.com/swrwatt.html http://embeddedengineer.wordpress.com/ http://www.jasonhsu.com/linux.html