Earlier today, well now yesterday actually, I found out about a great alternative operating system called SkyOS.
To my knowledge SkyOS is NOT just another Linux distro, it is a completely different OS, and it runs on x86 hardware. At first I was very skeptical of its future and development until I realised many popular apps such as GAIM, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, as well as Abiword have been ported to the platform.
If Linux isnt for you but you are sick of Windows, take a look at SkyOS.
There is some more information on their website.
Here is a link to some screenshots also found on the site.
http://www.skyos.org/screenshots.php
