When I started looking for a Linux OS a few years ago, I wanted a small memory footprint at boot, something that ran fast on older hardware, and something that provided an X window manger that didn't consume a lot of memory. I found Crunchbang. Have your tried it? Originally based on Ubuntu, Crunchbang is now based on Debian. I love it and have stuck with it. Even though I did not have a lot of experience with Linux, I have had growing pangs learning the Linux OS with Crunchbang. Sure it works out of the ISO. What you learn comes from using the OS like drivers, uninstalling apps, and the like. If you have not tried it, why not give it a try. I love to run it off of a 2 GB thumb drive. I run it on an old Toshiba laptop and an old desktop 2.4 GHz CPU. I also run it with OpenVM and VMware Player. No problems.