Planning for Ubuntu 8.10ish - The Intrepid Ibex

Hmm, maybe then use Puppy Linux that's made for low ram computers?

But for more featureful Linux I have swithed from Ubuntu to Parsix.
Parsix boots and works faster than Ubuntu and I had to do less tweaking to
get it working.

You could try live cd of Puppy and Parsix to see what works better for you.