Based on @Chan-Ho Suh's comment, asked to be moved by @MarcoCeppi: > I think on Ask Ubuntu, the problem isn't really people suggesting a different OS as much as suggesting another desktop environment, web browser, or some switch which is likely to be undesirable since it is so major. I see from looking at your example now that the answers are suggesting another DE not another distro (as aking12 pointed out below). Perhaps those answers are not so good (I can't tell since I don't know how resource-heavy Unity really is on 12.04), but a lot of people seem to think Unity is pretty "heavy" and so it may be that the only really useful answer is to not use Unity.