Fat client and memory usage

[Valerio Pachera]

Hi all, I'm testing fat client on a edubuntu 11.10 server.
The fat client has 512MB of ram. Part of them are used by the graphic
card (~32).
After the boot, it shows ldm. At this point it's using 221MB of ram
and 0 of swap.

When I try to log in kde, it does it but it crashes soon after.
On console (ctrl-alt F1) I see message like "out of memory: killing process...".
There is almost no free ram space and 108MB of swap (the total amount
of swap) is used.

Using "ubuntu 2d" profile, works a bit better (it doesn't crash right away).
Swap is not used till I open some applications.

Do any of you use fat clients?
Which amount of ram do you suggest to use to work fine?