saving RAM questions

[Matt Morgan]

We're thinking of switching quite a few of our somewhat older desktops
to FC3. I've been using one of these for a few days--they're all
PIII's with 128Mb of RAM. I know that 128 is not really enough. Mine
runs very well with 384Mb, but swaps noticeably more at 256Mb.

Upgrading them to 256Mb would be easier and cheaper (they have only
two DIMM slots, so if we can buy 256's for half of them, we can move
those extra 128's to bring the other half to 256). So I'm looking for
ways to save on RAM.

I know about turning off daemons that aren't important. I've turned
off all but the most essential, although it doesn't make that much
difference after the first few, really. I know about the light
desktops like XFCE, but we want to stick with Gnome or KDE in this
case. Is there anything else big I'm missing--any other important way
to save on RAM?

Thanks,
Matt