I've done both with a P200Mhz w/ 128MB ram.  Compiling is a little slow 
- takes about 15-20 min to do the kernel, but Xwindows is pretty snappy, 
with a light window manager, like sawfish, or even Enlightenment, 
although it does take a bit of time to load up.  That's what I'm running 
right now on my P200.  Now, it's a bit slower with a distro like RH (and 
KDE) - but usable (if you turn all the eye-candy off), but X seems to be 
screaming with Gentoo - everything optimized for a Pentium-MMX and all...

-Lucas

Jeremy Fowler wrote:

>>Uh huh.  What's the lowest level of hardware YOU have actually USED XWindows
>>on?
>>    
>>
>
>Well, me personally? PII 350 w/ 64MB ram...
>
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>>A related question:  What's the minimum level of hardware YOU have actually
>>used to recompile a kernel?
>>    
>>
>
>Same, PII 350... If you disable the stuff you don't use it goes by pretty
>quickly.
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>  
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