I thought I'd post a link to this article on
InfoWorld primarily because I love comparisons.
On a computer with 8GB of RAM and on startup...
Windows 7 on x64 memory = 1.24 GB
Windows Vista on x64 memory = 1.34 BG
Ubuntu 8.10 = 349 MG
And the winner is...
by Martin Heller on InfoWorld
As a side note, the article also talks about using for backups....
At my former employer and current client, I had set up an Ubuntu system on an older PC, put in better HDs.. and every night it automatically backs up data from 3 different servers...
Ubuntu has always done the job for me.