Peppermint is worth a look, I think. I mentioned before (post 840 or thereabouts) that I'd not had much luck, but finally got it installed earlier to a 4gb virtual machine.

It runs quite nicely on 256mb of RAM, and although I'm still not convinced about cloud-based apps (privacy/tracking/data-mining/security), it installed Abiword, Gnumeric and finally that behemoth, OpenOffice, very easily from Synaptic. All that used about 2gb of the virtual drive, which is impressive.

I still suspect Antix to be the leader in the low-overhead stakes. It's hard to compare it with Peppermint as I still haven't figured out whether Guest Additions can be installed, or how to do so, in Antix. (Peppermint was absolutely horrible in VBox without Guest Additions.) It does seem to use less RAM, and I've had great success with it on the old Toughbook with its Pentium 2 and anything from 128 to 384mb of RAM. Not sure Peppermint could match that - but it is so much easier than Antix. And Antix with OpenOffice.org 3.2 takes up 2.2gb of hard drive territory.

(I'm looking for a suitable replacement for Xandros on the faithful Eee PC - don't really want to subject the solid state drive to too many installations, although I may be overestimating the threat of its early demise. Trouble is I've got the version where the SSD is soldered to the system-board - and Otherego can't safely solder anything more fragile than a car battery terminal.)

All great fun, though. Back to trying to figure out just what this wretched "keyring" is in Mint, why it murders the Eee PC's touchpad, and how to get rid of it.