remember one thing - windows users think that using all your RAM is a bad thing, that's because windows fills up your RAM with shit, then uses your swap file instead, which, by default, can be as large as the entire free space on your hard drive. That's why it makes sense to limit your swap file size to about 1.5 times your RAM size in windows, to force it to flush the RAM regularly.
Linux, as you might expect
uses its RAM. after all, what's the point in having all that RAM if you expect it to be empty all the time? the reason your RAM is always full is that it is doing its job. The fact that your swap partition (which by definition is set to a particular size, how sensible et c) is not full up shows how effectively your RAM is being used.
In my opinion, but remember this is mostly hearsay, you should have NO problems putting red hat 7.x on that machine, especially if all your hardware et c works in red hat 6.x. The only thing i might flag up is the size of your hard drive. a graphical install of linux with all the apps and so on that i want typically takes up 4Gb on my drive, you will have to shore down the software you want to install. Choose to only install one desktop environment, and so on (i recommend XFce
) however again, if you managed to shave 6.2 down to size, it will likely not be too much trouble to do the same thing to 7.x.
Good luck, hope you like it, let us know how you get on!
