I've often been told that Linux will work well on old hardware. I can confirm this is true with distros like ArchLinux but I've never had Ubuntu run well on old

I've often been told that Linux will work well on old hardware. I can confirm this is true with distros like ArchLinux but I've never had Ubuntu run well on old hardware. A year ago I got a free PC. A P2 with 128MB of RAM. Attempted to install and run Ubuntu. Incredibly slow. I also attempted a windows XP install and I was amazed to see that it ran just fine. Heck, I could even fire up VLC and watch a video. Yes, it was slow but it was certainly more usable than default Ubuntu. Now my latest experience with Ubuntu comes from a new purchase of a netbook. Samsung N150. It was cheap, it has 1GB RAM and an Intel Atom 1.66Ghz. I decided to do a dual install of Windows 7 Starter and Ubuntu 11.04. Ubuntu just chokes. Windows 7 fares better. Both are slow but windows is not unbearably slow. I've tried many distros and WMs and so far stock Ubuntu has provided me with the simplest install but the worst performance. Anyway, just my experiences.