I run it virtualized right now with 1 Gig of RAM and default configurations, which is not roomy with all the new eye candy and Gnome 3 environment but it's workable. Ripping out NetworkManager kicking and screaming, and all the different "PackageKit" toolkits is helpful to reducing the bloat down to a lean environment that can do actual software building and testing. Running a lighter window manager is a *huge* performance win: the excessive eye candy for the new Gnome is very resource expensive. Of course, I tend to prefer running Emacs in individual terminals without X, to reduce screen clutter and separate my multiple tasks. So your tastes may vary.
For seriously lightweight window managers, I've been using "vtwm" for years, still published by the Penguin Liberation Front and listed at
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/13029794/dir/mandriva_2010/com/vtwm-5.4.7-1plf.i586.rpm.html. The Penguin Liberation Front has been a very useful resource, for years, of components whose licenses are confusing or problematic: the old "xv" and "twm" programs, "libdvdcss" for ripping DVD's, MPEG libraries, and Pine and daemontools before they had their licensing revised. I understand why those components can't always be included in a completely open distribution with US based resources and primary maintainers like Fedora. But man, they're useful if you can accept the licensing personally or you're in a country with sane laws about DRM.