compact distributions for old equipment

[Malonowa <malonowa@wanadoo.fr>]

There's another window manager here that's based on fvwm2 with bits
taken out so it might be less memory hungry - it's supposed to be faster
so give that a try and see what happens.

http://linux-kheops.com/pub/xfce/en/index.html

What colours are there on a 4bpp display?

Not being an expert on PC graphics cards isn't there a 640*480 8bpp mode
- would this use less ram?

As far as apps are concerned.

What I might suggest is you download GTK+ libraries, imlib and some
graphics libraries. You may want to add esound to that if some of these
systems have old sound cards.

Then take a few little apps that use these facilities. Electric eyes
springs to mind.

Whilst programs such as Electric eyes aren't the base set of apps you're
looking for it'll give you a good idea of the performance since these
apps, when written, will probably use these libraries.

Could you check whether GTK+ apps such as Electric eyes will run in 4bpp
as well.

I hope that helps.

Roman.