well if you want memory i suggest you dont use x!
it will take up memory so far gnome has 3 different versions that i see and
then you have kde, i find gnome enlightenment keeps things simple but it runs
alot of aplets, kde runs god knows what and through all the bickering i herd
i have ran upto 30 different programs at once on kde and gnome enlightenment
and find them to be the most stable and still provide me with performance,
i run 64mb sdram,
550 celeron processor,
152 L2 cache
its a megar system in my opinion but linux makes the most of it!