[PLUG] Looking at distros for old desktops

[Arindam]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Raseel Bhagat <raseelbhagat at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 12:53 AM, Arindam <arindam.mukerjee at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I have some aging / old desktops for which I am looking for
>> appropriate distributions. I intend to use them as developer systems
>> for some kernel development (noo-b there, modest intentions) but
>> prefer an X installation.
>>
>> One desktop is a PIII 733 MHz with Intel 815e chipset, 512 Megs
>> on-board memory and 40G hard drive.
>> One is a P4 2.4 GHz with 1 G memory and 40G hard-drive.
>>
>> 1. Looked at Xubuntu for the lighter-weight XFCE and installed it on
>> the P4 box. Liked it quite a bit - my first *buntu box - so far have
>> only used FC/OpenSuSE. But, I want to hand pick packages that are
>> installed and all said and done that seems not so straightforward with
>> *buntus. Am I wrong there?
>>
>> 2. Are there Gentoo users who can tell me about their experience with
>> Gentoo. Is it too much of a bother in the long run to perform software
>> upgrades?
>>
>> 3. Any other lightweight but not too minimalistic distros?
>>
>>
> With 512MB you can even have the Ubuntu Desktop with the full GUI. Just
> don't opt for the advanced UI like compiz and all.
>

My problem with *ubuntu is the inability to customize my install set
before the installation. I don't want games, I don't want a whole lot
of stuff.

Is it recommended to remove packages from the standard desktop install
of Ubuntu. I am uncomfortable with the idea because I can never know
all the dependencies correctly and I don't want some library that will
never be used lying around on my disk.