Are there any "easy" Linux distros for low specs?

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I'm typing this in Fedora 21 on an Atom N280 1.66ghz netbook with 2gb ddr2. Gnome does lag a bit but not enough for me to really mind, and I appreciate the shiny desktop switcher and theming features. Half the time all I use is terminal anyway.

Ever thought of trying XFCE or LXDE, or even just OpenBox? Those work well on low specs. XFCE is probably the easiest of the three to use, while OpenBox is the lightest of the three on specs, even though it's strictly a window manager and it does not do things like desktop icons.

Having used Xubuntu a bit I'll load XFCE if I really need to but I can also just toggle Gnome to fallback mode in a pinch. Having begun with ye olde Red Hat I just know Fedora better than any distro mentioned here. I played around with Qtopia which I'm fairly sure was a Puppy derivative and I must say that seems a likely story as I couldn't make anything I needed work on there. Granted, that might have stemmed from using an ARMv7 tablet...

Lulz... Zorin! That's the name of a Bond villain portrayed as a Silicon valley robber baron.

Zorin is actually a pretty nice distro, though it's a pig on system resources, and I don't like the release model they use for it. But as far as "beginner friendly" distros go, if you have a fairly recent (and beefy) machine, I'd recommend it. It beats the crap out of Mint, that's for sure.

I have not tried Funtoo so I cant comment really comment. It seems to have a few differences but nothing that makes it better or worse than gentoo IMO.

Have you tried Xfce on Gentoo? It's been a number of years but that combo used to run fast for me on old hw or tiny VMs.

...of course you could always go old school with TWM, CDE or my favorite, E16

Xfce on Funtoo is AWESOME. I sometimes use that combo when my Xubuntu install is giving me grief.

I think it would be neat if someone came up with a set of scripts to automate a Gentoo/Funtoo installation to make things easier for new users. I didn't exactly mind spending hours tinkering, googling error messages, and editing config files to get a working installation, but I imagine most other people wouldn't have the patience for it.

The point of a Gentoo/Funtoo installation is to compile most of your software locally instead of using precompiled binaries, so instead of bundling packages in the traditional sense, what it could do is ask the user a bunch of questions about the software they need, then grab that software through portage and compile it. The script responsible for this would be included in the daily stage 3 archive, which in turn would be included on a live CD which would be capable of installing the stage 3 without too much user intervention, besides the normal questions a typical Linux install would ask. The whole point of my method would be to bring users the advantages of a Gentoo/Funtoo install, without nearly as much of the hassle.

Here I go again, hijacking a thread.

My son really likes to play Steam games. Could switching to Linux improve his FPS and lag? In the computer he games on, I think I have plenty of HD for a second partition, I have played with Grub in the past, and its an nVidia 650 video card. He would have to be able to get into Google Drive so he can maintain a cover.

I used to use HP-UX way back in time, and I can get myself into enough trouble with SystemRescueCD, I use gparted on that when I need to change the size of partitions, I can figure out ntfs-3g.I can recall how to use the vi editor but I am rusty.

Possibly, but more than likely, no. Now, I haven't played much with Nvidia cards under Linux, as I'm mostly an AMD/ATI user, but generally Linux isn't as well optimized for gaming as Windows, since it has a more open architecture and the GPU developers don't like that. As a result, graphics drivers aren't usually as good on Linux. As well, most of Steam's library is Windows only, with primarily just indie games and Valve's own titles being available on Linux.

Linux isn't bad for gaming, it's certainly better than it was even just two years ago, but it still has some catching up to do. My advice, go with a distro like Zorin OS if you want to play games on Linux, or even just Xubuntu. Zorin has high system requirements, but if you've got the specs for it, it's easy to use, and it has near-perfect compatibility with other Ubuntu-based distros. Don't use Mint though, it sucks, it's heavy on system resources for no good reason, it's different enough from stock Ubuntu that it has some compatibility issues, and the developer is anti-Israel, which I most definitely disagree with. Let's not turn this into a philosophical discussion though.

Even though I'm a Linux enthusiast, and I generally like it for day-to-day computing, I still keep Windows 7 around for gaming, and with all of the customizations I've done to it, I actually find myself using it as my main OS nowadays. It happens, I find myself flip-flopping between different OSes all the time.

The main drawback of the Linux kernel in terms of gaming is the latency. You might want to give FreeBSD a go, though; this is supported by Nvidia, and can run many Linux games via a compatibility layer. It will also give you better framerate.

I find my gaming experience on Linux improves a lot when I'm using a customized kernel, like a finely-tuned version of Liquorix, or even just the super-minimal kernel I built for Funtoo from the Gentoo sources. I might give FreeBSD a go one of these days.

How is FreeBSD's AMD support btw? Can it use the open xorg drivers, or even fglrx?

Modern FreeBSD versions are generally a lot more user-friendly than earlier versions. AMD doesn't release drivers for FreeBSD (Nvidia does), so you have to rely on inferior open-source drivers, unfortunately. FreeBSD can use Xorg, and you'll find the same frontends for it (KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, etc.) as you'll find for Linux.

FreeBSD is generally less versatile than Linux, though, so it's mostly used for specific tasks, when performance is a bottle neck (the Netflix servers are a good example of a system running FreeBSD).

My preference is for OpenBSD.

There is also a Dragonfly BSD, derived from FreeBSD, but I have never tried it.

AMD's xorg drivers have improved a lot, actually. I get about the same framerate on Goat Simulator running under Funtoo with the xorg drivers that I do under Xubuntu 14.04 with fglrx.