distros with xfce

As I wrote previously, Xfce is the best choice as desktop environment for older PCs. Planete Beranger reviews several distros that comes with Xfce. It's rather thorough. Check this distro review.

my quest for the greatest linux distro

Well, I can't tell that I found THE linux distro, but I tried Ubuntu and OpenSUSE and their performance can't match with Linux Mint (Xfce) on my three year old laptop. Linux Mint is Ubuntu-based, so we got the advantages of Ubuntu which's Debian-based and it is lightweight thanks to Xfce which is a desktop environment lighter than gnome (should I compare with Kde?). Furthermore, Linux Mint is user-friendly and I think that it is a good distro to start your linux adventure.