Minimalist laptop

[gboyce at badbelly.com (gboyce)]

> Hello Folks:
> What types of specs in terms of speed, RAM, hardisk, cards, etc. would
> you consider the minimal requirement for a laptop that was ONLY going
> to run Linux?  I am interested in having a laptop to take to meetings
> and demo my TV shows.  I bet there is not one universal answer to this
> question :-)

It is possible (although a bit painful) to run Linux complete with XFree86 
and a minimalist window manager on a low end Pentium II system (say 
300mhz, or even lower).  Assuming you don't want a full desktop enviroment 
(like gnome or kde), I would suggest 128MB, although 64MB is probably 
passable.

The minimum for you will be the minimum requirements for the most 
intensive task that you're planning on doing on the laptop. Based on this 
description, I would assume that would be the media playing. What sort of 
media files are they?  Depending on the codec and bitrate, media playing 
can be rather intensive and may cause you to need a faster system with 
more memory.