ttyLinux is a decent minimalistic distribution, it only takes up about 8 megabytes of hard drive space. It may be a bit too small for you since it doesn't really have its own package manager, so you'd have to compile everything yourself. If you install Debian you get the powerful package manager, but the initial base install is about 470 megabytes, so there's probably a lot of stuff you don't need. If you want it smaller than that you can try Arch Linux, which may have a smaller repository but, thanks to the smaller footprint, allows even more customization during the initial setup than Debian.

3rd (or is it 4th now?) nomination for Arch. Installs a sweet base system and you can build from there using pacman.

What about Puppy Linux? It is a full OS but very compact. It is live distro and HD installable.


http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy

Do you really need a "disro?" Look at busybox, to which you can boot it you wish.

I ahve about the same specs as you do though I only have 700Meg RAM on my main PC. the other PC has only 288Meg. Im using SLAX. Its Slackware derivative and it runs on liveCD only although you can save your changes to the HD. It is 2x faster than windows (on both machines) and it allows you configure and re-master your own. Such a promising piece of SW.

Most folks here are recommending complete graphical distros which sounds a fair bit beyond the OPs initial request. I'm guessing a shell is all that's desired... in which case I'd say Linux from Scratch would be the way to go. Complete control over what you need.

LFS can be a pain to get up & running, same as minimum Gentoo. He can install a minimum Debian with just a shell, same as Gentoo, or sourcemage. Arch is good one also.

It's an '07 post guys, let it be.

Oops...Just started to respond to a somewhat hostile post before noticing it was from January (and the person has not been seen since.)

Brain obviously not here yet--time for some caffeine.....