I found out that my Fluxbuntu-Gutsy-powered box with 256MB of RAM had to use swap to play a sound file. This was upsetting. I uninstalled Xorg and Fluxbox and slim, (login manager) but couldn’t figure out how to add virtual consoles, which Fluxbuntu sadly seemed to lack. I somehow failed to install the standard C++ libraries, (I was too fed up to try to fix it at that point) and just installed Debian Etch. I installed BOINC and ALSA from repos, along with libasound2-dev (needed to compile Mplayer to use ALSA) and was pleased to find I could now run Seti@home, transfer files in over sftp, and play an audio file all within 256MB. (With around 4MB to spare.) Hooray!