supposed to ask a question... ok I asked one. I know...
go look it up on redhat's page.. hmm didn't really jump out at
me there.. any way i was just lurking around and it seemed like a
good idea to join... but seriously, what is minimum processor
and memory requirement?

With Linux, there don't tend to be strictly defined "minimums," because you can customize a system to be whatever you want. I've been able to boot Debian on a 586 Pentium with 24MB of Ram. If you've got Swap space, you can probably get away with next to no ram, but it'll be slooooow.

Are you looking at GNOME? KDE? just terminal? All of those factors affect how much memory you'll need in the end.

A better thing would be if you told us how much memory you had, and people shared their experiences of whether they could boot with that much ram.

At the end of the day, this is linux. Experiment! Maybe this is just me, but the experimenting is the fun part...

Best of luck!

Assuming X86 based computer 128mb for text and 192 for graphical. Personally I would not run any RH based distro with less than 512mb. While you can run with less it will be incredibly slow while just doing common tasks. If you cannot get at least 512mb of ram, look at one of the lighter weight distros.

I thought the quote was no one would ever need more than 1M ram?

I think you'll find it was 640k, back in the day. I believe it's an urban myth though (the quote, not the amt).
I actually worked on systems back then and they carried 1MB, but only 640k was avail, the rest was reserved by the OS. Attributed to B Gates; allegedly.

Yeah, I just use it as my signature... I'm not confident enough that Gates said it it attribute it to him, but it's funny either way...

crazy... an average program has millions of 0s and 1s, and a CPU is doing Billions of calculations each second... and we wonder why it lags when we start a program, or why it crashes once in a while...

I'll say what has to be said, if Fedora/Red Hat is too bloated for you, look at DSL, Puppy Linux, Feather Linux, FluxBuntu, or anything running fluxbox, jwm, or icewm.

One important question is whether you are using a video card. When I built my computer, I put in the Fedora-recommended amount of memory, but forgot that some of that would go for my motherboard's video circuit, so I soon had to add more.

I now have 1GB, but I only use over 512MB when running one program.

oob4uleap,

The logic of this question has already been fully answered by the Guru, Senior and Members above.

It appears that the OP still giddy of Microsoft mentally where in every OS edition the Redmond authority prescribes "a minimum requirement" of hardware "to optimize the looks and feel" of their cranky program.

It must be understood properly that in the world of linux and freedom software it is the user who has the authority and he may appropriate to himself a pre-compiled slim kernel from others or compile himself something to become useful under 640K to justify B.Gates. Linux is a kernel. GNU is not a mere License but programs and apps too. A GNU/Linux can run even in a 1MB while M$ Vista cannot. But if the OP wants to ascertain the minimal requirements for the current top five (5) distros then the answer is very easily given by Mr. Google.

BTW, this should serve a good lesson that:

"Poorly framed questions are wont to receive poor answers."

Hope this helps.