Ok, after doing some experiments on my 2.66 ghz (2.78 as windoze says  )
I've got a compaq P3 450 mhz, 128 m ram, 10 gb meanwhile.
the first distro i installed on it was zenealk.
The performance is not that fast as i expected it to be. but for opening single application at a time it's works okay.
maybe i need to build ZenWalk from base?

Hi Tidus,

I'm running Zenwalk on a PentiumII (400 MHz) with 256 Mb RAM. I run multiple programs. Your limited amount of RAM will slow down the machine, I believe. Yes, loading the heavy programs like OpenOffice and Thunderbird etc. takes a while, and Thunderbird can seem slow ... but it should run. Do you have sufficient amount of SWAP?

I don't think you'll gain much from building Zenwalk from Core (if that's what you mean) ... but running Core (ie. without XFCE) could be an advantage, if you don't need a GUI.

Best regards,
Claus

right now i have hardware problem. the bios counts only 65 m of ram. i'm looking for suggestion right now.

Hi Tidus,

OK - that's bad news ... I have no good suggestions here, but to fix the hardware problem.

Best regards,
Claus

if there are two memory sticks, check them one by one.
sometimes, there is only bad contact on old machines, remove them
carefully put them in one by one.
reset your bios, in case you set bios timing wrong.

I'll try this.
By the way, I installed Zen Walk linux on my main machine, it's fast but it's still not productive.

yhea..i can confirm
even with 256mb ram,zenwalk and others distro.. go slow in application..
i've added 512mb more and a think it's perfect(and i use kde that is not the fast D manager..)..