The minimum LINUX configuration I ever saw was an i386SX/16 with 1MB of RAM, Hercules graphics and one floppy drive. Not much, however the system works best on stronger machines like 80486-class with 8MB RAM and up. X-Windows user interfaces might want even more to operate properly. In fact, there are also few Linux distributions which might be running on embedded 8088/8086 processors and up. Those, however, aren't true LINUX systems.