There's linux, and then there's linux politics, because no one can make a shell32 right, and some have to have very alien interfaces (gnome 3 anyone?) because of some sort of obsessive "don't be like Windows" rule, which hurts tthe end user.

I main xfce because Gnome and Kde screwed up in their 'revolutionary' releases. SRSLY DONT CARE ABOUT NO FUNCTIONALITY STRIPPED IN THE NAME OF WAVING WINDOWS

let's not get started about all those different audio system backends that don't work properly.

In the end, I replaced my linux partition with Windows 7.

In the context of what we do here on VOGONS, there's no OS A vs OS B as such, you just install what the game you're playing needs.

If you're looking for a good Linux distro that runs well on older hardware, I'd highly recommend the LX DE version of Fedora. It's stable, it's lightweight, and the interface is quite similar to Windows. Best of all though, it's user-friendly, but not in the annoying way that distros like Ubuntu are.

Another good distro if you want something even faster (and are willing to get your hands dirtier with config files and such) is Crunchbang. I'm running it on my laptop right now and it works excellently. 😁

I've always found the GUI of Linux (KDE and GNOME ) to run much slower than Windows-based OS's on retro hardware. I tried about 10 different distros and various versions of each some years ago and eventually gave up. My test box was a Cyrix 5x86-120 with 256 MB RAM. Damn Small Linux, or DSL, felt the fastest to me.

hmmm on one of my machines, I am running Linux Mint 13 MATE edition, but then again. On my mini pc, I am running Linux Mint 12 L X D E edition. Cause There is NO L X D E edtion of Linux Mint 13. So I am good for now. the GUI/Window manager L X D E is actually a good one. Cause L X D E only uses 64 megabytes. But of course there Linux Distros specially made for VERY old hardware. Antix is one, But I did a quick check on distro watch

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Old+Computers

GALPon MiniNo is another one, that aims for hardware that is 10 years old, or more. So keep digging.

Personally I started with Lubuntu (on my mini pc), and then I jumped a bit around, between Peppermint, Peppermint Two, Sabayon L X D E. Until I fell for Linux Mint L X D E for my mini pc, and there I first had Linux Mint 11 L X D E, and then now I have Linux Mint 12 L X D E. So the possibilities are basically endless.