Okay, so I'm not exactly a newbie (I used ubuntu for over a year on a different computer, but that burned out so i wanna try Debian, heard lots of +'s of it)

But this other computer is older, used win98. It has 310 MB Ram, 1.5GHz processor, and i don't even know what the graphics card is, i barely used it.

Will debian lenny with gnome run well on that? Or should i remove gnome for XFce?

Thanks in advance,

Cody

Definitely run XFCE or LXDE or similarly lightweight WM/DE. Maybe you could look at increasing the memory of possible. Otherwise, based on what you said, it should run fine.

Debian will run just fine with those machine specs providing you use something lighter than Gnome.
I'd suggest looking at LXDE or Fluxbox.
Here's a good guide to installing a minimal Debian system:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=13362

Using the Debian net-install CD, you can choose an alternate desktop environment to install. I like Xfce because it's kinda sorta like a "Gnome lite" and doesn't pull in HAL (as LXDE does, at least in Debian Stable) and it may be pretty much like what you are used to in Ubuntu. It's light enough to run fast, but full-featured enough to have cool applets in your panel(s) like the weather applet, disk and monitors, etc. But even the Gnome environment will run fine on your 'puter in Debian because it doesn't include all the unnecessary cruft that Ubuntu adds. Enjoy!

-Robin

I've got Fedora with Gnome running on a computer with a 1.4MHz Centrino, so the CPU's OK. The memory might be a bit tight though. I recently tried Icewm, and that saved 30MB of memory and nearly halved the CPU loading.

If, like me, you like Gnome, then I'd agree that Xfce is a good choice. Don't forget to stop all those unwanted services that all operating systems will start on the off-chance that you might need them!