There is no general "System Requirements" for any given ROS distribution, it depends on which packages you use. It's always wise to use the latest ROS release, which in this case is ROS Hydro. This ensures you have the latest implementations of all the tools and libraries available in ROS.
Your laptop is very well suited to running common path planning algorithms and processing Kinect data. The Turtlebot reference platform utilizes an Atom-based netbook with 2 GB of RAM and can run the ROS navigation stack and Kinect drivers with no problems -- a Core 2 with 4 GB should perform much much better.
Originally posted by mirzashah with karma: 1209 on 2013-10-26
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Original comments
Comment by nemesis on 2013-10-26:
My query is more from a stability point of view. Whether or not the packages in Hydro all stable for slam related applications. I don't wish to revert to an older version after realizing Hydro has too many issues. I don't have the time for that unfortunately!
Comment by mirzashah on 2013-10-27:
In general, newer versions of ROS tend to have more stable packages. I've never heard anybody say something like "oh we need to fall back to ROS Diamondback because it had more stable SLAM packages". In fact, older releases probably have bugs that have been fixed since. Also older versions are no longer supported.
Comment by nemesis on 2013-10-27:
Thank you for your answer! Appreciate it. :)
Comment by Athoesen on 2013-11-08:
I just wanted to second what mirzashah is saying. I'm newer to ROS but from what I've read the only reason people continue to use older versions is that they've either a) built their code and projects around that specific ROS edition or b) certain versions of other assets such as PCL work better.