There are a few related threads to your question below about running a
lighter weight distro in the archives. My experience is pretty much limited
to Debian vanilla. I've seen several recommendations for the Xfce desktop
environmnet. That's what runs on the Raspberry Pi with only 500 MB of RAM.
There are several that like Mint as well. 

 

http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list

 

-          Distro recommendation Feb 2013

-          Best light distros for ancient laptops - Feb 2013

 

Paul wrote:

On this desktop I am currently running Ubuntu 12.10 I have a p4 2.8ghz cpu 2
gigs of ram I am using a Ralink rt2561wifi card. I have a primary single
partition on my 320 GB PATA drive. I have an agp Nvidia 6600 graphics card
installed also. I have a core2duo laptop running Ubuntu 10.04 also I have
another desktop with a 80 gig sata hd 2.5 GB ddr1 ram Ralink rt2561 wifi
running Ubuntu 10.04. I am a little bit concerned as to Ubuntu 12.10 slowing
down my computer so much does it really matter with EOL coming up next month
for 10.04?

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