Honest Hardware Requirements?

[wctyler]

I'm playing with Linux in an effort to learn a little more about the system.

My main PC is a Windows XP box running a Athlon XP 2600/333 with 512mb RAM, 40 gig hard disk space (RAID 0), and works pretty well.

My spare PC is an old IBM Aptiva AMD K6/2-300 with 64mb RAM, and a 6gig HD.

I installed Redhat 9.0 on the Aptiva. It runs, but the GUI drags ass. I'm also procuring a old AMD K6/2-400 with a 6 gig drive and 64 or 128mb RAM. Will that work any better?

I'm thinking that I'll end up wiping out the Aptiva and reinstalling without the GUI so that I can simply run a MySQL database and play around with other stuff.

Will the 400mhz machine do any better with the GUI? Is it an issue of processor speed, or RAM that is making the 300mhz machine drag so much?

[nukes]

64mb ram isn't really enough for X. My system uses on average 100 mb or so of RAM.
Also, if you're running it on a K6/2, don't install KDE/Gnome with all the eyecandy. Go for a more lightweight window manager like WindowMaker, Fluxbox or FVWM. If you really want KDE/GNOME do some simple things to save memory like disable visual effects, sounds, wallpaper, screensaver etc.
http://www.windowmaker.org/
http://www.fluxbox.org
http://www.fvwm.org/
Also trim down the services you run.
Chances are RH installs by default Apache (web server) ssh, ftpd, and loads of other stuff. Go though the services (There will be some sort of GUI program I'm sure) and disable all the ones that you don't use. don't leave them enabled for the odd occasion you might want them, if you need them in future, its just one command to start them back up.
You should be able to get Linux running ok on such a machine, I've got a few k6/2 500's that run fine. (ok, so they're faster than yours, but its not that much of a difference)

Hope that helps