Enlightment is a Window Manager. It's available for most distro's.

https://www.enlightenment.org/

Old? The beast you're referring to can run pretty much anything smoothly. You can safely go with Mint Cinnamon. MATE edition requires 512 MB RAM, XFCE 384 MB, so targeted audience for those DEs are machines that would curl their tail in the face of yours.

Oh the happy day! Welcome sleepless nights custodian!

As for your system not being powerful, you should see some of the machines I have installed modern distros on :)

Don't think, just do it!
Volkov Commander?

Could be, I was pretty young back then but I definitely remember the two columns and the blue background.
I also used it a bit back then because it was easier to copy files using it.
My dad loved it so much he used Windows Commander when he moved onto Windows.
I also used GEM back in the day.
For some reason I thought that was related to the Genius mouse I had.. perhaps it came bundled with it or more likely I'm remembering things incorrectly.

1- Yes, Mint's installer can resize an existing Windows partition to free up space for Mint
2- Yes, but it depends on the game and the graphics card/drivers you have installed
3- I haven't really done any proper comparisons as I don't usually bother downloading both Windows and Linux versions of games, so I can't give any definite examples at this time. Many older games have fewer issues/run better in Wine than in modern versions of Windows though

I'll have another look at KDE5 if/when Mint starts using it in their KDE edition, although I'll probably stay with Cinnamon now.

1) Yes. I sure wouldn't recommend it though. I imagine it would be a great way to hose to OS's at once! Linux is very flexible though - if you're just looking to try it out, you can generally run it from just about anywhere: CD-ROM, External Hard Drive, USB Stick, etc. Most install's will also resize an existing partition to create a new Linux partition for you. There is always some risk of data loss though, and it can take a long time.

2) I can't say with any certainty, but I wouldn't think it would make a noticeable difference. There are some instances I've heard of where a game works better in WINE than on windows, but I've never seen anything like that first hand.

From the ones I had the occasion to try on Windows recently, there is at least Age of Empires 1 & 2 and Diablo 2 that I can remember. They were a mess to run correctly on Windows 7 and full of graphical glitches, but ran flawlessly at the first try on Linux through WINE.

I hadn't even thought of the "making it work" perspective. I was thinking purely performance.

Basically, i'm browsing the web (Palemoon browser), i'm downloading stuff (also using Transmission for torrents - legal stuff), Open Office runs just fine although the small 9 inch isn't inviting to do any serious work at all. Aaaaaaaand because i know it's important for you; i can play Fate of Atlantis among other adventures of that period! ;)

Things i can't do with the netbook; Can't run GIMP (although i used to use it extensively on my P4 system - of course runs faster on more powerful systems) or any other resource-heavy application, can't view HD videos.

Seriously now, I'm willing to bet you'll do as much, if not better with Linux. :)

Thanks! I've always heard that adding a partition "later" was rather problematic, just wondering if that had changed and it appears it has not.

As to my other question about Linux speed vs. WIndows and overhead, I wasn't so much interested in whether Linux would run a Windows game better than Linux, I was wondering if it common that Linux ports run better than their Windows sisters.

Linux isn't picky about what it boots off. If you've got a USB hard drive, you can set it up on that. You can even leave your main hard drive entirely untouched if you choose to install the bootloader on the USB hard drive and then access it through your BIOS's boot menu (F8 or F12 on all of the mobos I've owned but you may need to turn off fast booting in order to have time to press it).

As for speed, it really depends on the quality of the port and that varies. (Same with Windows ports of console games, really. They can be excellent or garbage.)

I remember seeing benchmarks saying that Wine beats real Windows on everything but graphics because of how much more efficient the Linux kernel and filesystems were compared to the Windows kernel and NTFS, but the overhead of the runtime DirectX-to-OpenGL translation for graphics eats up the difference. (That's part of why they're working to move it into its own thread. So it can sit on another core if the game's threads need all they can get.)


...or, if you don't mind a sort of Windows 9x aesthetic, IceWM gives you a WM and panel in one and, last I checked, it was roughly as light as Openbox.

Yes and it involves resizing the partition rather than reformatting. You can do it from the Linux installer or it may be more comfortable for you to boot Linux from live DVD/USB, temporarily install program called Gparted (if not already) and modify drive's layout therefrom.

The other solution is Wubi hummer010 recommended, but it should be noted that its development has been discontinued. It should still work though.

The main thing is you can modify it to your heart's content to suit your needs. You can install multiple desktop environments that are easily accessible as different sessions from your login screen, and use some of the lightest ones (that couldn't even rightly be called DEs) to run the games with practically all the computer power dedicated to them. Disable unneeded services with few clicks if you want to boost it even more. When Linux graphics drivers become on par with Windows counterparts and OpenGL/Vulkan supersedes DirectX (slowly on the way), all comparisons will become obsolete.

OpenOffice requires java, which can be a bit of a memory hog. If you just need a word processor and spreadsheet, you can get better performance out of AbiWord and Gnumeric.

I find they fit my needs just fine, and are way lighter than OpenOffice/libreoffice.

Never had any problems using OpenOffice in my netbook, although it takes sometime to load the first time (well, it is underpowered after all!). That being said, i've never used it for serious work; for that, i just use my desktop PC since, as i said above, i can't really work in a 9" screen and keep my eyes healthy & intact! :P

I've been using OpenOffice but sometime ago i switched to LibreOffice. Never tried AbiWord, i'll make sure i'll try it in my Linux machine, thanks for the recommendation! :)

There was a Norton Commander in nineties. Navigating hasn't been never easier : )
So, you shouldn't have a problems without a mouse. I barely use one myself, even if I am not a fastest typer in the world.
And you can make linux look however you like. Personally I prefer simple interface with no fancy animations and I am still using classic shell on win7..

Can I still enter? I'd like to be in for Pillars of Eternity or Transistor.

Either way I enter or not, thanks for the giveaway and all the useful information.