I run Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop. That would be a fine choice as well. And if someone ever needed more space, they could always just plug in one of those 2.5" external drives that are about the size of a pack of cigs. I believe those come in 500gig sizes now too. For people that are able to live with mp3 files, you could fit a pretty substantial collection and the OS on a 64gb flash drive and go completely diskless. Something like this would be tiny and silent. You could "hide" it pretty much anywhere.

Regards,