[Tfug] Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" Alpha4 and the Intel video drivers...

[Jim March]

>>With only 512 on board I probably will have to upgrade to 1gb.<<

Probably not, unless you want to.  The 845 video only eats 64megs RAM
tops so it won't suck down too much.  But then again, with 512megs
you're really better off with XFCE in my opinion.

I would try Karmic Alpha4 on that thing, and then once it's up and running do:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

That will install XFCE and it's depends.  Then restart and at the
login point, select the "session" XFCE instead of Gnome.  XFCE is
broadly similar to Gnome but needs less resources to run; it will make
a 512meg machine feel significantly faster.  XFCE may give you more of
a speed boost than adding another half gig and run Gnome on a machine
with somewhat marginal CPU power...