Vista vs. Linux - Which is REALLY better?

I'm sick of this "just get more ram!" bullshit. My 286 did almost as much functionality-wise as my current multi-ghz machine. Yeah, really. Sure, there was no multi-tasking, but I did the mostly the same things as I do today.
Hello, fuckers, just because you can eat ram doesn't mean you should. It costs money and also reduces the number of programs you can run.
I can see it now: in another ten years programs will have minimum footprint of 1GB, but they'll just do more of the same.

Linux sure can be better in terms of memory use. Currently supported distro's like Deli can run on reasonably 486/100 with 16 megabytes of ram. A bloated Gnome desktop struggles to page 500 megs, even with many applications open.