Hmm, I was distracted and I think I missed the point, I thought it was more
about system customization, not about 'preload' and so on.
I like my Debian as it is by default as far as RAM, cache, swap (it never
gets used, always at 0).. The developers seem to do a pretty nice work out of
it. The system is snappy and smooth on a 10 yr old laptop :P
Also wanted to point out that the above mentioned long customization time is
something you do only once and then backup your /home, so it's definitely
worth it, especially putting some time to secure a little bit more your
distro. Do it once and forget it.