I recommend you learn linux,with those specs you'll get good speed out of your comp but still have a modern,updated stable os....and for full responsiveness you could run entirely from the console,you can do everything fomr the console anyway,and games are going to run porrly anyway if your video card.That being said those are similar specs to an xbox with linux on it and it can run in X quite well. Or if you really don't want to use linux,grab windows 95 or 98 and strip it down to a bare minimum...a stripped down windows 9x is very fast,and if you do it right it will be quite stable.Start with 98lite(pro version),and do a micro install,and then google around and you should be able to get it running good.