From my experienced 512mb is the bare-bottom for 10.4 . For 10.4 to really be anything near "snappy" on 512mb you need a fast HDD(7200/SSD) and a dual-core of some sort. Otherwise, I would recommended 768+(but I don't think you can on a lombard). I believe 10.4 had a recommended 512 and 10.3 had a recommended 256mb.
One thing to consider when going down to 10.3 is the loss of wpa2 support. It isn't a big issue, but it is one of those make-or-break issues depending on your home network.(I have a nice netgear router that has a setting to accept both wpa and wpa2 at the same time)
I can't imagine the performance on the early iBooks that shipped with 10.4 and only 256mb of RAM. YUCK!
As for browsers, there is also camino you could try. Lastly, if it turns out to be unuseable take a look at Crux or MintPPC, I haven't used them myself except in emulators(on the school's iBooks....
) but I've heard wonderful things about them.
One thing to consider when going down to 10.3 is the loss of wpa2 support. It isn't a big issue, but it is one of those make-or-break issues depending on your home network.(I have a nice netgear router that has a setting to accept both wpa and wpa2 at the same time)
I can't imagine the performance on the early iBooks that shipped with 10.4 and only 256mb of RAM. YUCK!
As for browsers, there is also camino you could try. Lastly, if it turns out to be unuseable take a look at Crux or MintPPC, I haven't used them myself except in emulators(on the school's iBooks....
) but I've heard wonderful things about them.