It looks like the listed minimum for RHEL 6 was 1gb[1]. I don't think 128 was officially supported even then, so if you're happy with how it works now, you may still be happy with 7.

1) http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/unix/linux/install_RHEL6.h...

> I've been happily using CentOS 6 on my 128MB box

I used to do that too, but then I figured there's a constructive use I could give to my old desktops when any such system reaches the age of replacement - just max it out on RAM and declare it a "home server". Now I can run a Minecraft node for my kids on it - with 2GB of Java heap, no less.

I mean, my Raspberry Pi has more than 128 MB of RAM.

Lots of RAM - like chicken soup for your server.

When I'm building tiny Debian images, I use debootstrap, which doesn't seem to use much RAM at all.

There used to be a Fedora equivalent called febootstrap, but it looks like it's mutated a bit since then: http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/supermin/

You may be able to work around it that way.

Out of interest, what machine are you using CentOS 6 on? I find 128mb kinda tight - although I've recently found a VPS provider who's managed to get Debian Jessie working in 96!

Granted it is an Enterprise level distro with iscsi, storage drivers, xfs as default, other relatively heavy things in it included by default. Running on smaller machines was never a goal, if it did, it was probably accidental.

I don't even know if they have an ARM port (maybe an ARM 64bit for those new hip low wattage ARM microservers).