> The DVD drive is only 2X, so I don't want to spend a lot of time
> loading things I'll just remove later.

during installation there is a step (all on one page) where the
installer 'looks' at your system, hard drive, keyboard, etc and
"suggests" an install partitioning scheme....SOMEWHERE on that page
is a software section...where, if you click the right buttons you can
click to NOT install those things you do not need....like surely you
don't need any of the games :-)

and, though i love it you could skip OpenOffice in favor of (for
example) gnucalc (or somthing like that) and a lighter word
processor...or, none at all if you just need a email/nntp/browser
appliance...

for sure with a 300 mHz machine you are gonna need a lot of LIGHT
stuff...and, you already know that 10 GB is awfully small for
system/swap AND /home files...

good luck,

DenverD