On Tue, 25 Dec 2012 10:29:13 +0000
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Sometimes you can get manufacturers video drivers, but X-windows is a
heavier load than windows XP...

X itself is pretty lightweight, the window managers and desktop
managers run on it can be light and minimal or heavier and more
elaborate. Xfce and LXDE are lightweight desktop managers with the
"classic" (rather dated) look of CDE and W95 respectively, which quite
a few people seem to be using these days instead of the "full fat"
Gnome, KDE and Unity (Ubuntu) desktops.