Evan Carew wrote:

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JC,

For what its worth, the previously described PC104 486 based system was
used by my company to controll a filter system & write to an X display
at the same time running Linux. That system only had 128MB of RAM & that
might have been too much. All applications ran from RAM.

Good points Evan. A lot can be done if you set up a custom system. Up until
I switch to an AMD 64 bit system I ran slackware in which you can select
indiviual packages to install. You could get a very small system if you
wanted. Stick to on editor one window system and a custom kernel and you
can get a rather complete system pretty small.
Take a look at most 'Boxed' systems under /bin /sbin /usr/bin and /usr/sbin
and you will see a lot of programs that you will never use!
John