[TChad]

XFCE and LXDE are good desktop environments for old computers and resource constrained netbooks.

I'll give another vote for XFCE, though I haven't tried it in Linux. Works well in OpenBSD.

[FLAMING DEATH]

XFCE is very nice, but unfortunately, Xubuntu, the XFCE version of Ubuntu, is so bloated that some report that it actually runs SLOWER than regular Ubuntu. A shame.

I’ve thought of doing a custom build of base Ubuntu + XFCE to get the maximum speed out of my laptop, but it takes a LOT of time to do that, unfortunately.