here's a quote from here
http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka...ka=LinuxServer ;
"Which version of Linux ? Well, it's not important as long as it's 'modern' enough. A 2.4.18 or more recent is ok. Memory usage will depend of what you'll do of your server. For private use, 256 Mb and 512 Mb of swap are enough, for a public server, the more the better."
When you pile in all these players, you probably need over 1 gig of memory. Memory is very important - If I were to have so many players on my server, I would have at least 2 Gigs of memory , so as to avoid problems. I know by experience, zones start to crash with many people using many zones, and little memory available for the server.
Keep in mind, your OS needs/uses memory also - I know by experience, a modern Linux system with less than 256 Mb, starts to get slow. So put something in like EqEmu and a pulblic server, add your OS and its applications , what do you think happens?
You have to read the wakii, and meet the requirements before you can start asking yourself what your problem is.