Holy crap WattOS!

[sedrosken]

It's in the vein of Xubuntu and Lubuntu in that it's a version of Ubuntu for low-end and/or older systems. WattOS though runs on far less (192 MB during install, less than 128 MB after) and is by far the most fully featured (including the option of three different shells, not unlike Mint). The MATE version comes preconfigured to look like GNOME 2, with the Applications/Places/System menus. I installed it as the only OS on my Athlon XP, after I got fed up with XP and after installing the nvidia-current driver (which I am still surprised that it supports the GeForce 2 MX) I was good as gold. Still don't have WINE working right. I can, however, virtualize Win2k. I will update my sig when I get home, as I am currently mobile.

 

[Tannin]

Sounds like a nice one.

 

[sedrosken]

Decided to give Mint another go on the laptop.

I'm proud of myself! I managed to get wifi working first try!

And now that I've really figured out VirtualBox, virtualization is a good choice for running my old games as it appears WINE is not up to the task. Funnily enough, the web handles better for me through Linux than Windows... and Linux boots hella slower. Go figure... Also, took a good look at my RAM usage under Mint - 11.4% (with a Chrome window running alongside.). Holy crap! 19% was very low for me under 7, and that was with absolutely nothing else running in the background.

 

[Mercutio]

WINE is an odd thing. Some software will actually run better, some worse, and some things not at all. I used Windows DVD ripping software under WINE continuously and it was utterly flawless, and somebody has a hacked-together script for installing Wine and IE for using Netflix under Linux that's utterly painless, but gaming is a decidedly mixed bag. WoW might work perfectly, but X-random-indie title probably won't run at all.
Personally I'm just glad they finally got MS Office working right, at least up to Office 2010.