XP (home) works fine with me too. Can't even remember when it last fatally crashed.
jus pick up some sort of bsd, unix, or linux distro...whichever fits your needs cuz chances are good that atleast 100 will come close and quit a few will fit about 99.999999999999999999999999999999% to your needs, if not perfect....
I have to disagree with lloydr here... If one wants to play games, Windows is the only alternative. Sad but true. The gamehouses won't port their games for Linux because not much enough people use it and people don't use Linux because there's no games for it. Might be because Linux is missing a standard like DirectX.
If you are happy with XBoing, XTetris and those, then Linux is a good option...