The 300MHz proc is under the limit. I have not had success getting any
Ubuntu on a system less then 400MHz. And since the video is onboard it
is using system memory, Ubuntu limit is 256 you are cutting into that
with the onboard video. I do not think it would be a success, and if you
happen to get it on there, well molasses flowing in winter would be
faster.

What's the minimum requirements for Xubuntu? Any way that you look
at it, a machine with a 300 MHz processor and 256Mb of RAM is not going
to be mixing much music.

On a machine with a 300MHz processor, I'm guessing that the best that
can be hoped for is an XFCE distro (Xubuntu). More than likely a
Fluxbox distro (Feather Linux or Damn Small Linux) running lighter
applications will be required for a 300MHz machine. By lighter
applications I mean stripping out Gimp and OpenOffice in favor of
something a bit lighter like Abiword and gThumb.

In answer
Ubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit and Mac architectures. CDs require at
least 256 MB of RAM. Install requires at least 2 GB of disk space.
From the
www.ubuntu.com site
They have a nice Dell set up on the site.

If Xubuntu and Ubuntu have the same system requirements, what reason is
there for Xubuntu to exist?

Um guys its an emachine. Most of there earlier systems in the late 90's I
should say where garbage. They got in trouble with the federal trade
commission because they where going to the other companies and buying failed
pieces of hardware throghing them into cases and calling it good. In my
opinion emachines run worse then most systems. The info about them getting
into trouble I got from a friend of mine who used to be one of there
engineers.

That is my question as well. I have tried to install X on older systems
and the video never took even in text or force.

Gnome vs. KDE vs Xcf.............

Well I guess I'll forget using the old E-machine for sound and Video.
I'll keep it. I have a couple small machine shop machines and I'd like
to rig them up cnc. Cnc will run off of almost no machine at all so it
will be good for that. Those old E-machines may have been junk but I
paid $300 for it at a time when I didn't have $500 for something
better. I ran until 2003 with replacing a fan and a power supply both
together were less than $100 and I worked it pretty hard writing a
couple books and doing a lot of picture editing in Photo shop.. It
still runs. Was a good $300 dollars worth id say. there is always a
place for a cheasy piece of equipment that is cheap. Model T Ford or
Volkswagon both were cheap and much loved.

As a small Linux alternative to Ubuntu, you might try
Puppy Linux. It's only about 70M and will run from a
CD. I ran it on a 128M HP desktop. It's pretty slick.

A other great Linux distro than can even run a old 486 is
Deli Linux. So if you have a old 486 Lap Top you can run it. You all so can down
load floppy too.
http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/

The only things that you should be aware of is it's flakey USB support which
took an entire day to flog, which you should now be able to follow on the web,
and its different directory structure that is non-standard.

I've booted the Ubuntu LiveCD on really old PC 586 version with 182MB memory,
with a video card. It does work, but slowly. I recommended the 256 MB memory
sometime ago when using video on the MoBo due to the consuption by video. YOu
might want to try using the Alt CD and doing a character based install instead
if things are taking too long.

Some of the Ubies apps may work just fine running Xubie. Rosegarden will not
work. Yet,. most of the sound apps should work just fine.

I really have to agree with the opinion that 300 mhz and 256M ram will
make for slooooooooww music mixing, regardless of OS or application.
That stuff is really cpu intensive.

some of us still cherish those older computers with slow
processors and tiny rams, I recall updating my first by doubling the
ram to a whooping 215kb. Those were the days. But they did not expect
to run the software we put on them today.

It seems that really you need at least 2500mhz and 256mb RAM to even
load and run smal bistros with any success.

Surely a typo with that 2500 MHz...

I run 6.06 quite happily on an 800 MHz machine, I use it as a backup
server, and a spare machine to use when I'm working on my primary
Linux machine. It does well at both tasks.

It has 256M of RAM

My wife runs Centos 4 on a 450 MHz machine with 256M of RAM, but
that's a different distro than what we're here to discuss. It's a
little slow starting Firefox or OpenOffice, but once they start, they
perform adequately.

hmmm that remembers me of my first computer :)) a KIM
1 :) with a stunning 1kb of memory and a 1mhz 6502
128k instructions /sec ..programming in hex codes and
yeah you could save your programs on a casette tape
with 110 baud
1980 :)) and you could send ascii characters to a
serial printer to "type" a letter and that all with
4kb rom and 1 kb ram
i still wonder why we need ghz mbytes and so on for
even the most basic things
...of that i ve much fun in programming
microcontrollers..

Well, we developed the "high level " programing languages so that
people who couldn't understand machine and assembly language could
program computers, and anyone that couldn't learn to run a computer
could have a GUI.

The result was the bloat we see now. I am not sure that it is all
bad, just technically inefficient.