Fast&Lightweight for Programming C (Vim&GCC) and reading PDF's

[Xethron]

Heya guys,

(Hope this is in the right forum...)

I have a very simple request. I have a old PIII 700Mhz IBM Laptop with 128MB RAM (Very limited resources). I want to do two things on it. Programming (C and C++) and reading PDF's.

Currently I have Arch Linux on it. I use Vim as my text editor and gcc as compiler. Some other apps I use are GNU Screen, elinks, and trying to set it up so I can code Android apps in it. And I am pleased with the setup.

However, I recently developed the need to view large PDF's (100-1000 pages). I have tried some viewers using FrameBuffer, but that is really slow and it takes me about 5-10 minutes to get to the page I wanted to be, and by that time the Lecturer has moved on to 7 other topics.

So the next possible solution in my mind is installing a lightweight x environment in which I can view PDF's with a lightweight PDF viewer. Maybe even changing to another distribution.

Some opinions I received are Lubuntu and CrunchBang.

I have also received videos on Android development. If possible it would be cool if I can view them as well on my laptop, but that's not important.

I know this is a question with a few hundred possible solutions, but all opinions/advice will be considered, appreciated and looked into!

Thanks in advance
Xethron

[MASONTX]

Distrowatch.com has a search function that includes older computers. It will return a number of candidates which you can try to see if they work better for you.

[Xethron]

Ah yes, forgot about that.

TinyMe Linux looks quite awesome... As well as AntiX. So many choices :P

[Rubberman]

Myself, I would either install DSl, Gentoo, or Debian with a minimalist desktop (xfce, icewm, twm, etc). I run Debian Etch (2.6.24 kernel) on a 64MB ARM board with 50MB+ left over for applications, so 128MB is not out of the question.