[Rule] Lightweight graphical configuration tools & suggested apps for a 100% non-English system

[Michael L'Heureux]

Hi!

I'm setting up some old donated laptops (400-600MHz, 4-6GB HD,  
96-256MB RAM) for educational use in Egypt.  These will be used by  
people who have no previous exposure to computers and cannot read  
English.  So the goals are as follows:

- Set up an extremely light-weight system that can comfortably browse  
the web, use basic office apps and handle basic digital media formats  
(PDF, audio & video)
- Set up a very easy-to-use, easy-to-navigate & intuitive desktop  
environment in Arabic
- Install a set of graphical configuration tools (in Arabic)

I've played with UbuntuLite (which is, I guess, the latest version of  
RULE?), but I found that there are practically no GUI-based config  
tools (without reading English, end-users will not be able to use the  
command line) and even after installing all Arabic localisation  
packages with apt-get,some key apps are not localised (Kazehakase,  
PCManFM, LeafPad).

The problem that I've found is that (with some exceptions) the only  
packages for Linux that tend to be translated into Arabic are the  
popular, mainstream (ie. heavy) ones.  All main parts of XFCE (and  
therefore XUbuntu) are localised into Arabic, which is great, but the  
speed difference with UbuntuLite is noticeable.

I've been thinking of trying the steps to trim down KDE that were  
posted in this list a while ago...

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F% 
2Fwww.guiadohardware.net%2Ftutoriais%2Fusando-kde-micros-32-mb-ram% 
2F&langpair=pt%7Cen&hl=pt-BR&ie=UTF-8

.... but I've always found KDE to be much more clunky (and less  
simplified/easy-to-use) than GNOME or XFCE and IceWM, etc. to be even  
worse.

Any other suggestions?

I've been following discussions on the list for a while and am hoping  
that someone out there might be able to offer me some advice on this.

Thanks in advance!

Michael