You want fact?

Have a reason, and have info to support everything you say. I really would hate to see, someone try to say one and not support what they say, because I am going to argue against you if, you don't give anything intelligent, and supported.

I will post my honest opinion, with facts behind it later.
Ok.. You're confusing me here. I gave you my opinion with facts (that is, the fact that Slackware is stable and the XP is more flexible when it comes to new hardware, which is true -- to a degree -- of many of the Windows platform). Or did you want concrete numbers from something like SiSoft Sandra?

If that's what you're looking for, then go for the stats research then. You'll need comparisons done based on utilities and that's kinda hard to do since some utilities work on one platform but not the other. Both support hardware well but have a different learning curve as to how to implement that. It's the learning curve that results in the "opinion" as to which one is better. The reality is that people will view things differently and this will have an impact. I view a learning curve as something fun. But based on what some of my students reactions are, they aren't interested necessarily in poking around the *nix environment to truly understand it (I said some, not all).

And when I referred to flexibility, I was referring to how it picks up hardware far more easier and has better acceptance of new hardware (in *nix some hardware may require kernel recompile). That recompile does make the kernel faster compared to the bloat of XP, which is almost like having everything compiled into one kernel.